As a budding artist in Stamford, Connecticut, Samantha Hamilton, CAS-SPA/BA ’22, relished trips to Michaels with her mom to buy paint and other supplies.
Now, as project manager and lead muralist at Chalk Riot, a Washington, DC-based public art company, the city streets are her canvas.
“There’s so much pavement—it’s gray, drab, car-oriented,” she says. “It’s exciting when art can be used to reclaim that space.”
Founded in 2013, Chalk Riot has worked with Fortune 500 companies and global nongovernmental organizations to create hundreds of pavement murals, ranging from four square feet to more than 4,000.
But the projects that are closest to Hamilton’s heart are those that help improve road safety—like the “traffic-calming” road murals and curb extensions in DC’s Chinatown neighborhood that encourage drivers to slow down and secure safe passage for pedestrians, particularly the elderly.
“City planners and officials are starting to see [public art] as a viable means to solve traffic violence,” Hamilton says.
A 2022 study by Bloomberg Philanthropies found that asphalt art decreases crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists by 50 percent. DC is at the forefront of the pavement art movement with initiatives like Color the Curb, a multiagency collaboration that has installed murals in curb extensions outside at least 20 DC schools since 2021 to increase safety and visibility for kids, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Hamilton began working at Chalk Riot in 2021 while she was still a student at AU, double majoring in art history and political science.
Today, she leads efforts to install about 40 commissioned public art projects around the world each year. In 2025, that work took her from Wisconsin to Brazil and utilized a combined 320 gallons of industrial roadway paint, 200 feet of sticker paper, and an untold amount of chalk.
Hamilton says the medium’s beauty is that it’s both eternal and ephemeral: it leaves a lasting impression on its viewers but washes away with the next rain.
“Chalk is cheap; it’s accessible, and you can use your freedom of expression to bring it wherever you want.”