Sheila Levrant de Bretteville began working in print graphics — books, posters, newspapers, and billboards — which have won awards and have been placed in special collections of public libraries and private art museums. The pieces that best express her personal vision give voice in public spaces to people not generally heard in public life. Her current projects include etching the railings of a new Boston highway with quotes and images from displaced residents and carving titles of immigrant stories into the risers of granite stairs of a new Flushing library. In 1991 she became the first tenured woman at the Yale University School of Art.