Rochester Artist Creates Inspiring Chalk Art Near St. Mary’s
Kit Jester moved to Rochester, Minnesota over a year and a half ago for treatment at Mayo Clinic. In his spare time, he loves being creative and making chalk art in his driveway, and more recently near St. Mary's.
Kit graduated from Augusta University in Georgia in December 2020 with a major in Psychology. While his schoolwork was all about the sciences, he's always had a love of art. He told Augusta University's JagWire, “'Since I was a little kid up through middle school, drawing was all I wanted to do. My interests soon broke into writing and science, but I still loved art.'"
However, later in high school art became much more difficult for him. He says, "'my muscles began progressively twisting my posture and made walking harder. My hands also got tremors, so my ability to hold things like pencils suffered and I couldn’t draw precisely anymore.'" After arriving at Mayo Clinic and going through an evaluation, Kit was diagnosed with a form of generalized dystonia.
He then went through a surgery called deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery which helped Kit a lot. When Kit told me about the surgery he said the first noticeable difference was that it helped calm his tremors. But the most dramatic effect was helping with his walking and posture. He wrote to me, "The DBS isn't perfect, but I wouldn't be able to do my pictures without the benefits I get from my treatment, and I'm grateful for the doctors who have been helping me."
His hands still have slight tremors but with the huge pieces that he does with chalk, you can't even notice. He says, "it's thicker and easier to hold when I'm drawing!" Here's one of his really impressive pieces he did last year in his driveway. Fun fact, it was the first chalk drawing he did!
The drawings are all very impressive, including this one that you can find out at the corner of 2nd Street and 14th Avenue, across from St. Mary's. This quote is by Steve Maraboli.
He says because of everything that's been going on since he got to Rochester in December of 2019, from personal health things to the pandemic, he wanted his art to be a form of encouragement to others. So all of his art has a positive quote or message.
Here's another piece of chalk art he did on the same corner by St. Mary's.
I'm excited to see what other great works of art Kit will create on the sidewalks of Rochester!
Check out another chalk artist that was in Rochester last year who also has some crazy talent!