Graffiti News

Four friends returned to the wall in early July

Four friends who grew up painting graffiti in Evanston, Illinois, reunited in early July 2026 for a legal collaboration at Green Bay Road and Simpson Street. According to the Chicago Sun-Times report published on July 17, Garrett Munski, Ole Flores, Alex Mendoza and Jordan Nickel painted individual panels while catching up on lives that had taken different professional paths.

Their shared history reaches back to the 1990s and early 2000s, when walls, viaducts and underpasses around Evanston were part of their graffiti activity. Nickel subsequently built an art career under the name POSE. Munski became a mechanic, Flores a certified public accountant, and Mendoza the owner of a sign company.

The reunion put those different routines alongside one another on a single surface. Music by Johnny Cash and Buena Vista Social Club accompanied the spray painting. For people following street art, the setting offers a way to read the collaboration through both its separate panels and the relationships behind them. The artists shared a place and a history without having followed the same career.

A mother's name gives one panel a personal reference

Flores included the name of his mother, Eva, in lettering that recalls her work in glass etching. The Sun-Times reports that she once worked near the mural site and died in 2025. Her name connects his contribution to a family history located close to the wall itself.

Born and raised in Evanston, Flores returned from a nearby suburb to take part. He had watched Nickel, who is a few years older, paint when they were young. This collaboration was Flores' first time painting in 20 years, making the panel both a return to a practice and a memorial to his mother.

Mendoza, by comparison, paints and makes things almost daily through his sign business. He described a distinction between that trade and the experience of making art with longtime friends. Nickel also described the project as time away from work. He remembered taking a bus along Green Bay Road, while old friends and relatives stopped by during the painting. Those visits added another connection between the work and the neighbourhood.

The permission wall was a separate next step

The collaboration preceded a permission wall scheduled to open later in summer 2026 on the other side of the same wall. That reverse face looks onto an overgrown vacant lot. As described in the July 17 report, the four friends' finished contributions and the forthcoming space for permitted graffiti were distinct parts of the project.

The work came together with support from Evanston 5th Ward Councilmember Bobby Burns and Art Encounter's Lea Pinsky and Dustin Harris. Pinsky and Harris brought the artists together and presented the proposal to the city's arts council. Burns supported locating the project on a wall in his ward.

Munski hoped the future permission wall would give children a safe place to practise, spend time outdoors and move around. His comments put the emphasis on learning the craft through access to a surface. For street-art followers, that makes the planned space relevant beyond the finished mural: its intended purpose includes repeated practice by another generation of writers.

Green Bay Road and Simpson Street locate the collaboration

The intersection of Green Bay Road and Simpson Street is the location given for seeing the reunion mural. A useful way to look at the work is to compare the individual panels, then find Eva's name in Flores' contribution. Knowing the reference makes the lettering legible as a family tribute as well as a painted form.

Nickel told the Sun-Times that people honked and waved as the friends worked. He contrasted that response with the arrest he believed the same activity would have brought in 1993. His account describes a change in his own experience of public reactions; the collaboration itself was undertaken legally.

As of the July 18 fetch date, the source supplied no exact opening date, visiting hours or participation procedure for the planned permission wall. A visit to see the collaboration should therefore be distinguished from a trip to paint on the reverse side. The summer opening remained a plan in the report.

The site brings together several ways of understanding a wall: a place for old friends to work together, a surface carrying a family name, and a proposed practice space for young painters. Keeping those roles in view gives visitors more to notice than the finished colour alone.

Explore street art with the Wallscape map.

Source: Chicago Sun-Times