Murals, Chalk, & Resilience: Artist Hilary Frambes on Tampa Bay’s Creative Pulse

Tampa Bay doesn’t just have a chalk art scene — it has a chalk art ecosystem.
And muralist/chalk artist/portrait artist Hilary Frambes is one of the people keeping it vibrant, resilient, and unapologetically colorful.

In this episode of the Tampa Bay Arts Passport Podcast, Hilary breaks down what it really means to create art in public — from weather apps and scaffolding to the joy (and chaos) of making work while strangers watch in real time. She shares how she moved from fine art to illustration to chalk festivals to large-scale murals, and why Tampa Bay is such a rare home for this kind of art.

We also talk about:
✨ How chalk art became a kind of performance art
✨ The community that forms when “insane people chalking in the sun” meet each other
✨ What it took to design and hand-paint our Arts Passport “Tampa Tails and Tales” merch piece
✨ Why resilience is her one-word hope for Tampa Bay’s arts future
✨ What it felt like to have five Sarasota chalk pieces literally ground to dust
✨ The surprising teacher comment that almost derailed her entire career
✨ Her dream dinner with Georgia O’Keeffe

Plus: a reminder to support public art while Florida politics… does what Florida politics does.

About Hilary:
She’s a muralist, chalk artist, portrait artist, and longtime arts educator whose work appears across Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida. She’s also behind the first-ever Arts Passport Artist Merch collaboration — a hand-painted, joy-saturated collage celebrating Tampa’s icons, landmarks, and artistic spirit.

👉 Check out Hilary’s merch collaboration with Arts Passport
https://www.tbartspassport.com/tampa-art-merch/

👉 Follow Tampa Bay Arts Passport for more stories, local art, and community love.

If you enjoy the episode, hit like, subscribe, and drop a comment telling us your favorite Tampa mural or chalk festival moment. It actually helps more than you think.