After graduating from high school in 1887, Selma spent ten years teaching second and third grade in the
Indianapolis Public Schools. In 1905, following her graduation from Pratt Institute and a two-year residence in New York, she returned to Indianapolis. Selma became the assistant supervisor of art for the local public schools in 1906, and also taught art classes to educators on Saturdays at the John Herron Art Institute in 1906–07. In 1907, after her marriage to T. C. Steele, Selma left her teaching career in Indianapolis and moved to Brown County, Indiana. She devoted the remainder of her life to supporting her husband's work as a landscape and portrait artist. Selma became the farm and property manager at the House of the Singing Winds. She maintained and supervised improvements to the Brown County property while Steele focused on his painting. Selma is credited with transforming the grounds surrounding their home into gardens and an artistic landscape "interesting enough to be placed on the painter's canvases." Managing the remote hilltop property proved to be a challenge due to lack of many amenities, including accessible roads, electricity, and running water. In 1911 T. C. and Selma Steele purchased additional acreage to increase their Brown County property to a total of of land, which became the present-day T. C. Steele State Historic Site. Steele used the landscapes and gardens that Selma created as subjects for several of his paintings. Over the years Selma supervised several improvements to the property, including the addition of landscaping and flower gardens, a west-wing studio, an enlarged screened porch on the west side, a pergola on the home's east side, and kitchen improvements. Selma also supervised housekeeping and farm labor, managed the farm's livestock (a cow and a horse), and made purchases for the property. For the first several years the Steeles resided at Brown County during the summer months and returned to Indianapolis for the winter; however, they decided to establish themselves as year-round residents in 1912. In 1922, when T. C. Steele became artist in residence (honorary professor of art) at
Indiana University in
Bloomington, Indiana, Selma furnished and decorated a second-floor area in University Library (present-day Franklin Hall) for his use. The converted space became a welcoming art studio and gathering place on campus where Steele and his wife greeted visitors and students could watch the artist at work. The couple resided in Bloomington during the winter months and returned to their home in Brown County in the summer. Although a fire broke out on the grounds of their Brown County property in 1922, the buildings were saved, but Selma retained a fear of forest fires for the remainder of her life and banned campfires on the site. ==Later years==