Street artists from around the world will descend on Chicago this weekend to paint the sky … or at least some viaducts along the Chicago Skyway.
“Meeting of Styles,” an international street art festival, returns to the Southeast Side for its fourth straight year, starting Friday.
The three-day festival will take over a vacant lot near Commercial and South Chicago avenues. There will be food, music, arts and crafts vendors, and of course, street artists painting the nearby Skyway viaducts.
“What’s the purpose, but to brighten our own neighborhood?” said Crystal Vance, one of the event organizers.
Festivities begin around 5 p.m. with a talk from Chicago-born street artist Desi Mundo before a 7 p.m. outdoor screening of “Alice Street,” a street art documentary featuring Mundo.
On Saturday and Sunday, around 60 artists will paint from noon to 7 p.m. while local vendors host a bazaar. Entry is free; no registration is necessary.
Another “Meeting of Styles” will take place simultaneously near 59th Street and Damen Avenue. About 70 artists are expected at that event.
The Southeast Side event has become an important way for the street artist community to come together, Vance said.
“We get stronger as a community when we have events like ‘Meeting of Styles,’ where we work together, where we are self-generative and we can have that self-determination in the art and in what we do,” she said.
Some participating artists are local, while others are coming from as far as Mexico and Germany, said lead organizer Eduardo “Edie” Luna, a street artist who goes by dTel.
All must follow some ground rules.
“No guns, no violence, no nudity, no drugs,” Luna said. “We try to push positive imagery.”
The 38-year-old grew up in the neighborhood, admiring graffiti in the viaducts and hopes the event will inspire another generation of artists.
“Allowing events like this to happen in our community is important to spark interest in kids to be creative and to be able to express themselves,” Luna said.
The event coincides with the South Chicago Mexican Independence Day Parade, which organizers say is the oldest in Chicago. Departing at 1 p.m. on Sunday from 88th Street and Commercial Avenue, the parade will pass through the Skyway street art festival on its way down to 100th Street.
Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.
