AUSTIN, Texas — Austin resident Shelley Brothers is a chalk artist. She gets paid for her work but it didn’t start out that way. Her story began the day she grabbed some chalk to show her young son a few things.
“I would bring him outside and do his ABCs and 123s. It started with him asking me to draw certain characters, but I didn’t know how to at first. I don’t have a background. I didn’t go to school. I’m very self-taught. When people were like, ‘You should do this for a job,’ I kept going, ‘No, no, no.’”
A few years and lots of chalk later, people started paying Brothers for her art. Her business took off during COVID.
“That was a really good time for people to celebrate driveway birthdays, so I did a lot of birthday celebrations on their driveways,” Brothers said.
She calls herself the “accidental chalk artist.” She never imagined a hobby would turn into a business.
“I do weddings. I do restaurants. I do personal driveways. I’ve done an album cover for a gentleman. That was fun,” said Brothers.
Her chalk art is also an inspiration for people passing by, including one woman whose daughter had died.
“There’s a bigger thing than just chalk. It was like, ‘Oh, this is drawing feeling and emotions for certain people,’ and you just never know what that might be,” she said.
Brothers say she loves everything about her style of art, from the way the chalk feels to the joy it brings others. She says she’ll be doing chalk art for a long time.
