A Graffiti Artist Hides; Reporter Seeks

Art by snacki, an elusive graffiti artist, has been popping up all over North Side neighborhoods.
Image courtesy of snacki

It came to me in one of those terrifying flashes of clarity that drive some people to drink and and others to gorge on pie: My life had become a cut-rate Samuel Beckett play.

I’d been waiting for snacki — an elusive graffiti artist who has developed an appreciative following in Chicago — for nearly four months. And on a recent Friday evening, I should have been triumphant: After endless negotiations and delays, the person whose work had begun populating my dreams finally had agreed to call me. Now I just had to be patient. And rearrange my schedule. And wait.

I’d first heard about snacki from an acquaintance who had been tracking his signature faces — droopy eyed and highly expressive — for more than three years. Linda Holland, a Chicago designer and writer, now owns several pieces of snacki’s art, each acquired via a painstaking (some might say maddening) sequence of e-mail messages, and, eventually, meetings with snacki’s “agent,” a 20-something guy who wore paint-splattered pants to their most recent rendezvous.

Until recently, a Google search for “snacki” delivered little more than links to Flickr accounts. Then, just like spring, snacki’s art — occasionally punctuated by antimaterialism commentary — began popping up all over North Side neighborhoods, and he was the subject of an enthusiastic blurb in Chicago Art Magazine.

My pursuit began in earnest in December. I quickly realized that snacki had to be handled with the kind of diplomacy and journalistic sensitivity usually reserved for indicted politicians or philandering athletes. I sent him an e-mail message. Then more. He eventually agreed to an interview under two conditions: He wouldn’t give me his phone number, and there would be no face-to-face meetings. Fine. At which point he disappeared for two weeks, only to resurface just as I was giving up on the whole idea. And then we started the whole process over.

A degree of caution on his part was understandable. Chicago, as Matt Smith, a spokesman for the Streets and Sanitation Department, proudly told me, has one of the world’s most aggressive anti-graffiti programs. Ostensibly aimed at gang “taggers,” the city’s $9-million-a-year efforts cast a wide net, often nabbing so-called street artists, who can be fined thousands of dollars and even serve prison time.

If part of the allure for graffiti writers is the thrill of illicit activity, Chicago has done a great job of taking that buzz to the next level. The city’s ban on spray paint sales adds a layer of inconvenience — forcing artists to buy paint in the suburbs — but, one imagines, it also heightens the frisson that comes from explicitly defying The Man. The same can be said for the speed with which graffiti is removed.

“Most things only last a few days, if that,” snacki said in an e-mail message. “So the awesome thing about seeing a piece of street art or graffiti in Chicago is that the person had to have done it within days of you seeing it.”

And then it’s gone. Much like the artists themselves.

It is a truth universally acknowledged — by savvy retailers, and, apparently, by snacki: The more difficult it is to get something, the more we want it. I wanted to talk to snacki. And he wasn’t making it easy, right up to our appointed hour.

Six o’clock came. And went. By 6:30 I was wrestling with a familiar internal monologue: Why isn’t he calling? Is it me? Had I come on too strong?

At 6:32, an e-mail message: “So sorry, enjoyed skateboarding a little too much. Is it too late to call?” No, I replied. It’s not too late. Now is fine. I will be here. Sitting by the phone.

By 7 o’clock I’d started to hate myself. This wasn’t J. D. Salinger, for Pete’s sake. This was a dude who rides a skateboard and can’t tell time.

Finally, at 7:15, the phone rang. Hallelujah, it was him. After a tentative start, he warmed up slightly. He has never been arrested. He wouldn’t tell me his age, only that he’s “old enough to know better.” His nickname, he said, was coined by friends who noted his uncanny ability to materialize just as his friends were tucking into dinner.

Soon, he was talking about graffiti the way some people talk about coffee. Or crystal meth. “It’s an addiction, honestly,” he said. “And like any other addiction, everyone starts for a different reason. At this point in my life I couldn’t imagine not doing it.”

But why graffiti? Why create art that is, by definition, impermanent? Not to mention illegal?

“When you put a gallery show together,” he said, “it’s only going to attract a certain crowd. If I paint a billboard that you can see from I-94, Amtrak and Damen, it’s going to hit a lot more people than just some college hipsters or some 40-year-old art collectors.”

Much to my disappointment, snacki did not seem to be a lunatic genius. Very bright and slightly squirrelly maybe — but utterly lacking the self-importance I’d assigned to him from afar.

“At the end of the day,” snacki said, “writing graffiti is just acting like a little kid, and running around and having fun. It’s about not taking myself seriously.”

Wise words. If only he’d shared them with me back in December.