THE SUMMER OF LOVE... had many amazing elements swirling through it, but you could always count on art, and colorfulness, and imagination, and sunshine to play a role in most every experience that fabled 1967 moment offered. (Yes, even if the sunshine was not literal but, rather, a state of mind.) Those are several of the elements that will be present in San Rafael on Saturday, June 24 and Sunday, June 25 when the 2017 Italian Street Painting Marin returns to spread some proverbial sunshine around the first weekend of summertime.

Over 100 Madonnari, or those artists who craftily turn chalk and cement into fabulous portraits and landscapes and tromp l'oeil eye-teasers, will take a seat, or kneel, around 5th and A Streets in downtown San Rafael. After the first chalk stroke, the pictures will come together over the weekend, with the final wonders fully and completely on view by the close of day on June 25. But so much of the joy of a chalk festival is watching the beginning, too, and how the artist's vision is planned out.