She lost four fingers in a car crash. It hasn’t stopped her from creating beautiful sidewalk art

Rebecca LaFlure has been making sidewalk chalk art in and around her North Side neighborhood since the start of the pandemic and posts photos on Instagram with the account @chalkofthetown312. She draws even though she lost all of her fingers on her right hand during a car crash in 2007. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times)

On a patch of sidewalk, within earshot of a one-legged man grousing about the lack of buses, Rebecca LaFlure knelt down and opened her box of colored chalk.

A little later, a figure bloomed on the gray-green canvas — cartoon bright, like a child’s tattoo: Arthur, the beloved aardvark.