Less than 20 minutes after sunrise Saturday, artist Rahmaan Statik was already 16 feet in the air with a spray-paint can in hand.
He was among dozens of artists on Bloomingdale Avenue between Humboldt Boulevard and Kedzie Avenue below the Bloomingdale Trail for the sixth rendition of Battle 4 the City, a timed graffiti competition on the border of Humboldt Park and Logan Square.
And between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, they were all in the running for a $10,000 prize for the winning crew. IKS Crew from Mexico were named the winners.
“I’m just excited to be out here with everyone,” Statik said. “This is hip-hop. … It’s like a game of basketball — we play till the clock is out.”
The contest started eight years ago at Project Logan in Logan Square with about a dozen artists facing off individually, but it has expanded to a quarter-mile-long international affair in Humboldt Park.
Teel One, a graffiti artist who grew up in Edgewater, helped launch the competition and has continued it annually since. He has loftier goals for the competition, saying it’s ripe for reality TV, but ultimately, he wants to take it to other countries so he can bring winners back to Chicago.
A graffiti artist since 1988, he said the competition is an opportunity to give artists creative freedom with prize money attached and an opportunity to learn. Stationing creatives next to one another means they get to observe other artists’ processes firsthand — with some playful trash talk in between.
“We’re big believers in the idea that ‘blade sharpens blade,’” Teel One said. “We bring guys in from other places and push them to be better, and [that] makes us better every year.”
This year, artists from Canada and Mexico joined those from around the U.S. while DJ Mos Def blasted tunes that made the pulse of the countdown palpable. Also at the festival were food vendors, a barber shop and mural artists not competing but taking their time with pieces on extra walls the city gave the competition permits for.
Statik and his crew RK had something a little different in mind. He usually paints to inspire, in line with his motto “Be your higher self,” but not having direction from a commission, they decided on something else.
He described his style as “nuclear,” or more precisely: “If you made Caravaggio the Incredible Hulk.”
“It’s hysterical, aggressive and dark all in the same piece,” said Statik, a first-time competitor in the contest. “A lot of the stuff we do is community uplifting, but this is something more. We get to be selfish now. … The people who don’t know art, that’s who it’s for. It might inspire somebody.”
That’s how local graffiti artist DTek got his start — he used to drive trains and was inspired to get into graffiti by seeing the tags pass him by. It made bringing the supervillains of his childhood cartoons to life on what used to be the wall of an elevated rail line even more rewarding.
“This brings some good memories back,” he said, reminiscing on how his father, another of his inspirations, used to draw him as he watched the very same characters he was painting pop out of the TV.
To help plan out his part of the piece, DTek used an augmented reality headset — similar to virtual reality but with clear lenses, so that it modifies the wall in front of him to show outlines of images he chose as references ahead of time.
“It’s nice to freestyle and bring a wall to life. … This is pure passion,” he said.
Even painting for themselves brings something out in others. DTek said his crew CAB, known for their CABOOM pieces around the city, are often trying to help out the kids they see their younger selves in and who almost got lost to darker paths in life.
“It’s like opening a flower and blossoming,” DTek said. “These kids have tons of opportunity, but when they’re closed in a bubble, they can’t see it. It becomes a rough life — some kids never get out of their neighborhoods. Graffiti brings the brave out of us.”
