When you walk into Chelsea’s Café, the first thing you’ll notice is the big chalkboard music calendar.
It’s elaborate, colorful, vibrant and done by the restaurant and bar’s own Kim Howard.
She took over the chalkboard calendar from T.J. Black in 2012.
“Every little square is its own piece,” she says.
From her work at Chelsea’s, she’s gotten other gigs at The Spanish Moon for chalkboard art. She has also created album covers for local musician Ryan Harris’ Songs for the Porch and an upcoming album.
A current manager and bartender at the Perkins Road overpass restaurant and bar, Howard talked to 225 about her creative process.
• “I kept it simple at first. Then I got more and more elaborate with every month. Now, when I do it, it takes me around five hours.”
• “I like to pull shapes from my environment and create patterns with that. Sometimes, I’ll just ask an employee to give me a prompt, and they’ll be like, ‘I’m thinking about sandwiches right now,’ so then I’ll abstract a sandwich into the shape.”
• “It’s an intuitive process. I think so much about everything else in my life. This time for the chalkboard is my freedom from that.”
• As a high schooler, a sophomore history teacher chided her drawings. “I would make elaborate notes and decorate them with arrows and pictures in the margins. She would say, ‘You’re not going to be able to do that in college.’ When I got to college, I was like, ‘I’m going to make art my job. I’m going to show that woman.’”
