Cardboard pizza king Herman Cain may have suspended his presidential campaign amidst mounting allegations he liked to tomcat around, but that doesn't mean he isn't subject to parody in the form of street art. more ›

The notion that graffiti is an artistic expression has remained largely underground, but in the social media age where access to people with similar interests is readily available, this has started to change. more ›

Artist Shepard Fairey, whose best known for the Barack Obama "Hope" artwork that became an indelible part of the 2008 Obama Presidential campaign, is in town for Art Chicago, where he's installed a piece in the Merchandise Mart's South Lobby. While in town, More Fairey artwork, including his other notable piece of work, the Andre the Giant-inspired "Obey" artwork, has popped up around town in the form of graffiti tags. Some of those tags have been tagged themselves. more ›

Look, we all appreciate street art. Even 1st Ward Ald. Proco Joe Moreno, the new go-to graffiti blasting quotesman, has said it’s not street art qua street art he’s against, it’s the destruction of property aspect of it all. Whatever. If arting on a wall is destroying it, we have bigger problems. The fact is, Chicago’s infamous war on graffiti has only entrenched this city’s street art credentials. The biggest threat to street art is street art itself. Gimmicky and hypocritical marketing techniques, like those used this week by the Maxwell Colette Gallery and Pawn Works to pump up tonight’s Gaia show, aren’t just taking the “street” out of street art, they’re taking away the fun. more ›

Yesterday we looked at some lost murals in Hyde Park, which were whitewashed a couple years ago to make room for new ones. The north wall of the viaduct is now covered with a mosaic-mural bricolage in the style of the North Side murals at Foster and Bryn Mawr, and the south viaduct wall includes more local imagery like a Metra train and prominent black Chicagoans Jean Baptiste Point DuSable and Gwendolyn Brooks. The new murals are gorgeous, no question, but we're still sad to have lost the old ones. more ›

Until a couple years ago, the viaduct at 47th and Lake Park, just on the north edge of Hyde Park, was covered in murals that were more reminiscent of street graffiti than the narrative, community-painted murals we’ve previously covered in Pilsen and Hyde Park. The slightly recessed concrete rectangles formed natural canvasses, and a number of muralists took part in the project (which seems to have been completed in the late 90s or early 00s). Most of the murals boasted a street graffiti style, with spray painted words bleeding off the edges of blackened concrete. Some of the murals were beginning to flake and fade, and some had suffered vulgarities at the hands of late-night passersby with cans of cheap spray paint. more ›

• Gapers Block reminds us that 15 years ago today was the peak of the legendary 1995 Heat Wave that claimed the lives of 700 people.
• Bail has been set at $1.5 million for a West Side woman accused of setting her disabled boyfriend on fire.
• Police want a new gun range in an area surrounding Whitford Pond near 134th street but environmentalists aren't so hot on the idea.

Yesterday, we brought you photos of the first confirmed Chicago work by famous graffiti artist Banksy. In the comments section, reader "dankru" posted a link to the above photo that was taken at location around the Loop last week. There's no "official" confirmation that it is, indeed, another Banksy work, but rats are a common Bansky calling card while this specific rat is the same one that's being used in conjunction with the Banksy-centric documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop" and its promotional posters. It's also identical to a work Banksy has posted on his site. We're 99 percent certain it's his, but If it's not an official Banksy work, it's a damn good rip-off. Here's another angle of it by frequent Chicagoist Flickr contributor TEFennell4. more ›

It looks like British graffiti artists Banksy has paid a visit to our city. Even as his work has been cropping up in San Francisco and Toronto as of late, he found some time to drop in and leave the above Untouchables-inspired work at the corner of Randolph and Peoria. The work has been confirmed as his on his own website. Art gallery Maxwell Collette put up several shots of the work here. Be sure to check it out before Mayor Daley catches wind of it and has it painted over. [via] more ›

If you walked by the Art Institute’s Modern Wing earlier this week, you might have wondered if they were promoting a new exhibit on street art. Bright graffiti stretched for 50 feet along a light stone wall, bookended by the words “Modern Art” and “made you look.” While Chicagoist in no way condones illegal activity of any sort, we have to admit that this graffiti raises some interesting questions about the accessibility of art. It’s unlikely the tagging was gang-related, and it seems to be a pre-meditated, self-referential joke about art. more ›

Last month, we stumbled upon the wonderful photo collection of Quinn Dombrowski, showcasing the various scribbles and graffiti scattered about the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. At the time, Quinn let us know the photos were being compiled for a book. Now, it's here for you to own and she's also having a fun little contest to promote its release: a remix contest. Quinn says: "Do something nifty with the graffiti- you choose the medium (video, song, poetry, essay, digital collage, mashup, something physical that can be photographed or mailed, etc)." You can submit entries to her at quinn(at)crescatgraffiti(dot)com through December 20; check out the contest's website for more details. more ›

We were perusing some pretty pictures on Flickr when we stumbled across this collection by Quinn Dombrowski. The photos are of some of the creative graffiti that's been posted at the Joseph Regenstein Library on the campus of the University of Chicago. We talked with Dombroski who informed us of plans for a book based on the intellectual scribblings. more ›

Teenagers do stupid stuff. We all know it. Most of us did stupid things ourselves. And so did these teens: a trio of teens was arrested for tagging the police memorial by Soldier Field. Police say the graffiti was non-gang-related and not anti-police. Which is nice, but still. Really kids? If you're gonna tag something, you couldn't find a blank brick wall in an alley? You had to tag a memorial serving fallen police officers? Send 'em to boot camp, we say. more ›

Chicagoist Flickr Pool contributor Curtis Locke (a.k.a. Find a City To Live In) captured and shared some great shots of street art in the city's Lower West Side. more ›

On a recent trip to Bridgeport's Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicagoist encountered the following scenes of daredevil graffiti and industrial dilapidation. We're pretty sure the silo tableau is referred to as "the Building" by local bombers, but being a height-fearing homebody artist we're not quite sure. Does anyone have any stories about this building, or know more about the tags displayed there? Let us know in the comments section. more ›

Artists beware. If you plan to paint anything on your own property that depicts even the slightest vestige of the Chicago Police Department, you run the risk of being brown-washed. At least that’s what happened to well-known Chicago artist and muralist Gabriel Villa Thursday. He received a call that a large-scale, outdoor mural he had been painting in Bridgeport for two weeks had been covered in brown paint - at the insistence of 11th Ward Alderman James Balcer. more ›

Appropriate in the wake of this morning's look at the Guardian Angels-graffiti video, it seems some graffiti'ers managed to tag some highway signs at the Eisenhower Expressway and Congress Parkway over the weekend. The Sun-Times says that police haven't commented on any leads on the case. more ›

The indispensable blog CTA Tattler brings us a very interesting story about the Guardian Angels and CTA graffiti artists. In particular is a recent incident in which some GA's caught a tagger at the Western/Milwaukee Blue Line stop but the Tattler suggest their "detainment seems to cross the line to assault" territory. (Note - according to the Tattler, the Guardian Angels choose to videotape such detainments to help prevent lawsuits.) more ›

() more ›

Artist, musician, fashion designer, and documentarian -- Jeff Kilpatrick has been all of the above during his 20-year-plus artistic career, and in speaking to him one gets the sense that he's not going to stop experimenting with different artistic formats anytime soon. Tonight Kilpatrick has a piece in "The Open Door Theory," an exhibit at 54b Studio that features works by 37 artists. Kilpatrick and the others have painted doors that will be used in a labyrinth. This is 54b's grand opening, so don't miss it. more ›

Billing itself as a place where “fashion and art collide", Phaiz boutique continues its revolving relationship with both designers and the artists whose work adorns its walls. Since November 2007, boutique owner Robin Kyle has each month invited a new artist to create an exclusive installation within the space of the shop. more ›

We'll never see another abandoned mattress without wishing someone would spray paint cassette features on it.
more ›

Chicagoist is home to some hearty discussions about whether or not illegal street graffiti can be considered “art." It’s so customary to associate graffiti with vandalism, as soon as artists completed a commissioned graffiti-style mural on the exterior walls of The Ashland bar in West Lakeview, the complaints from area residents started rolling in. more ›

This is why it's always wise to carry some form of camera . Benjy saw some graffiti on the corner of a Chipotle billboard on Clybourn that merited both a closer look and reaching for the iPhone. Scope what some budding young Dzine tagged on the ad. more ›

Varut Subchareon, 19, is facing felony charges after police caught him spray painting in Roscoe Village. Subchareon then told police of approximately 20 other tags he'd sprayed in the neighborhood, including one on Park District property. Police say the tags arent' gang related but all look exactly the same. He's been charged with criminal damage to state-supported property. more ›

more ›

Former WKQX-FM 101.1 radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller filed a lawsuit Tuesday against his former employer, saying radio officials disparaged his show and blocked him from getting other work. We are getting pretty sick of the cell phone drivers, but we are always amazed at the cell phone bikers (not in a good way). Yesterday, an 19-year-old woman who was struck and killed by a garbage truck on the Northwest Side, was apparently talking... more ›

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom... more ›

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too – two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the... more ›

Finally, the State Senate voted about a budget for the state of Illinois, even if it did not exactly vote on one. By a margin of 34-19 it adopted a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, spelling out objections to the budget document endorsed by the Illinois House last month. Mayor Daley's stalled plan to put the financial squeeze on parents of young graffiti vandals will be advanced by City Council, but only after the maximum fine is... more ›