Landlord’s Wife Tells Chalk Artist That She Can't Paint Her Own Driveway, So She Asks The City To Paint On The Sidewalk
She was not happy about the Bulbasaur and Magikarp on her driveway.
TikTok A popular chalk artist on TikTok named Kara Vaughn recently posted a video explaining a confrontation she had with her landlord and his wife regarding the art she was painting on the driveway of the home she was renting.
The chalk art was harmless, but her landlord’s wife took great issue with it and expressed to her that it was disrespectful of Vaughn to paint the artwork on a home that wasn’t hers.
Her landlord’s wife said if she didn’t like living there, she could move somewhere else.
In Vaughn's original video, posted on May 28, 2023, she showed off the cute chalk art of a couple of Pokémon and a bee with a heart, but the very first thing she said revealed that not everyone seemed to feel the same way.
“My landlord’s wife told me my chalk art was disrespectful, and it had to go,” she wrote in her video. “Yesterday, I was doing chalk art in the driveway. My landlord drove by to check it out, [and] seemed really interested and excited for me.”
However, when he came back the next day, his wife was not happy about it, and told her that what she was doing was “disrespectful and not okay.” Vaughn tried to explain that the chalk art was completely harmless and would even get washed away the next time it rained, but the wife wasn’t hearing it.
“She kept saying things like ‘Kara we have conflict and you’re disrespectful to me and I know there are other places to rent so if you don’t like it here you could just leave,’” but Vaughn explains that all of their past issues were one-sided and she just likes looking for the “littlest things.”
She finished their conversation by cutting her landlord’s wife short, saying that there are no problems and leaving the situation, but the altercation didn’t end there.
Her landlord’s wife called her the next day after she asked for a copy of her lease.
Vaughn believes that there’s no mention of chalk art in her lease and that what she was doing was entirely within regulations, so she asked for a copy of the lease — her text was followed by a call from the landlord’s wife.
She asked if Vaughn was looking to move, but she just wanted a copy. Understanding that this probably had something to do with the chalk art fiasco, she apologized. “I’m really sorry about what happened Sunday,” the landlord’s wife said.
“We’re just dealing with a lot of different people and I just cannot have that on the driveway,” she continues. “I know it’s art, and I know you’re an artist, and I’m sure it was very good, but I can’t have that there.”
That’s when Vaughn reveals that she’s actually been able to do it on the sidewalk instead after getting permission from the city — the landlord's wife didn’t like that either. “Well I guess I’ll have to talk to the city,” she said in response. But Vaughn stands firm in that she’s doing nothing wrong.
After some back and forth, the wife threatened to bring her attorney into the matter to talk about what rights they had as landlords and accused Vaughn of not caring about her feelings. She even claimed that although Vaughn thought her chalk drawings were art, the wife didn’t, and so she found it disrespectful to have them.
In the end, she seemed to resign herself to either having to deal with the art or seeing what they could do legally, but she remains unhappy either way.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.