Project: LOOP

Street art in the south loop of Chicago has seen quite the bloom in
the last three years. The area is rich in character art, stickers, and
posters to boards attached to parking poles, spray-painted stencils
and graffiti. Especially during the warmer spring semester, art
becomes rampant.

Marker tags have littered the city since the beginning of time, but
what differentiates “street art” from your usual graffiti? One local
artist tells us, “It’s not about getting your name out there like it
is with tagging. You put your name on your posters and stickers just
to have a pseudonym to go by. The point is to raise awareness and use the city as your canvas.”

Why the location? The south loop is home to numerous college campuses as well as a handful of art schools. Columbia College seems to be a hot spot for colorful characters wheat-pasted to walls, and some art even carries messages, sometimes political and other times even lyrical.

Prominent artists in the south loop include:

• sticker artist Goons, with creepy doll characters and the occasional clever poetic message

• the very graffiti-influenced Nice-One, a former tagger from the suburbs

• the condom guy, pasting happy cartoon contraceptives on walls

• the politically-charged Viking, a tagger and sticker artist also known for screwing signs onto street sign poles

• Saro Rock, another tagger and street sign artist

• the eerie sticker artist Melt spreading eyeball-less panda bears on newspaper boxes

• Eyes and Mayo, a couple of rash taggers, as well as ESP, showcasing the artful side of tagging amongst many others.

It’s not an easy job though. “There’s cops on bikes that are especially on the lookout for anyone looking the least bit suspicious,” states another street artist who chooses to remain anonymous. “And it’s especially bad being an art student and getting caught. Everything and anything in your bag can be assumed evidence.”