When everything changed back in March, Heather Hallen-Adams went rooting around her basement and found the chalk.
That box of pastel artist chalk — more pigment-rich than the fat sticks of hopscotch chalk in the toy aisle at Target — had survived two moves, arriving in Lincoln when the food microbiologist from Minnesota landed a job in the Food Science Department at UNL in 2010.
Hallen-Adams had artistic parents and drew as a girl. Now she knits and keeps reptiles as pets and knows so much about fungi that the Poison Control Hotline calls her when someone eats a suspect mushroom.
“My training is actually fungal biology,†she said Tuesday.
She teaches food microbiology and all about the bacteria that goes along with it. “The good, the bad and the ugly.†(Salmonella, bad. Yeast, good. E-coli, ugly.)
People are also reading…
When she unearthed the chalk, Hallen-Adams was working from home, instead of at her office and lab on Innovation Campus.
So the days had a different feel, much like the world did.
The professor had been noticing the ways people had adapted to the changes, the absence of in-the-flesh community leading to new ways of connecting.
“There’d been some buzz of things like scavenger hunts for kids, putting up drawings in windows.â€
She thought about the long stretch of concrete outside the bungalow she shared with her husband, Gerry Adams, near East Campus.
And about that box of 30-year-old chalk.
So she set out to create something that might brighten the moment for passersby.
She began with a big-eyed goldfish on March 23.
Next came Gumby and Pokey on March 24.
A trio of dandelions -- one of them gone to seed -- the day after.
A tortoise. A dragon clutching an Easter egg.
Day after day, drawing after ephemeral drawing, washed away by the rain, leaving behind a faint patina of color, an outline of geckos and tigers and Ms. Pac-Man gobbling her way through a maze.
“I like fish, so I’ve done a lot of fish,†Hallen-Adams said. “Robo Fish. Fish in various indigenous styles.â€
She created a photo album of her quarantine chalk art on her Facebook page, which led to requests, some of which she’s granted.
“An ocean sunfish wearing something racy. A sheep driving a green tractor.†(She had to study up on her John Deere to get that one right.)
People outside of the Facebook realm noticed, too. Moms walking with their kids. Couples out for a stroll.
Neighbors, like Rich Leiter, a law professor and dog-walker who sets out twice a day with an aging white Shih Tzu and an overgrown Scottie.
The first time the trio came across a chalk drawing, Leiter took note. The next time they passed, a new drawing had been added to the sidewalk parade.
“A couple of days later, there would be a new one, and then it would rain,†Leiter said. “After about 10 times, I started anticipating what the next one would be. It got to be kind of a treasure hunt.â€
He started taking pictures, showing them to his wife when he got home and later his kids and grandkids.
He liked the whimsy of the drawings. (A toad in a top hat.) The occasional educational tidbit. (The Latin for a two-toned blue panther chameleon -- Furcifer pardalis.)
He appreciated the artistry and that the message wasn’t pointed or political. (Except, perhaps, the Lorax, who everyone knows speaks for the trees.)
Hallen-Adams had made some of her drawings small, others large enough to fill most of a sidewalk square.
“I ran through most of my 30-year-old box and replenished it at Gomez Art Supply,†she said.
And she has no plans to stop creating, at least not as long as she is working from home and people are enjoying the surprise of the nearly daily dose of art at their feet.
A John Lennon lyric framed by a crescent moon and a fiery sun. Well, we all shine on ...
A cat wearing a Groucho Marx mask. A pair of bright Charlie Harper-esque fish.
A lizard in lederhosen.
The drawings are so fun, said neighbor Cindy Loope.
“She’s got such a good eye. She knows biology, she knows anatomy.â€
She favors the reptiles, said Loope, who works at Morrill Hall. “She has all the nuances right.â€
When the drawings first appeared she was sad when they washed away, like the sand mandalas of a Buddhist monk.
“All that work.â€
But it doesn’t deter the artist, or the fans who look forward to what might appear on the sidewalk next.
Like Leiter, the dog-walker who once kept a varied route but no longer does, thanks to the pandemic chalk artist on the block.
“I have to walk by Heather’s every day,†he said. “Yesterday, there were two new ones. It was like a jackpot.â€