This Friday, August 9th, adidas Skateboarding takes its Showcase to the city of Chicago, where The Times and Uprise Skateshop invite a slew of local artists to participate alongside event host Junebug with music by Dan Mihail.

Michelle Wanhala
Tattooer and painter Michelle Wanhala plays with lively, bizarre imagery influenced by traditional American tattooing, cartoons, and retro decor.

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Peyton Stewart
An interdisciplinary artist who explores love, happiness and the afterlife, Peyton Stewart works through multiple mediums, including tattoos, paint, ceramics, and printmaking. Her work explores human experience through the twin lens of love and grief, touching on everyday human relationships and complicated, abstract matters like the afterlife. She draws inspiration from Eastern European folk-art, hand-painted signs, and traditional tattoo imagery, synthesizing elements of each to create her own unique and occasionally, heart-wrenching style.

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Paul Stacey
Stacey's visually striking pen and ink drawings create 'ruminative emblems' of his consciousness on watercolor paper.

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Benjamn Marasco
This Chicago-based visual artist delves into a diverse range of mediums but focuses on painting and graphic design. These days, with time split between client work and studio pieces, you'll see his mark, everywhere from murals to beer labels. Benjamn has developed a style that incorporates a bold color palette bolstered by a background in illustration and graphic design. He continues to explore new techniques and ways to make art

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Vivian Le
"I seek to subvert the conventions of portraying adolescence and femininity through drawing doll-like characters as if they were a part of a saccharine dystopia."

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Jourdon Gullett
As an artist and illustrator working in Chicago for the past decade, Jourdon Gullet creates a wide body of work for a variety of clients across the country. His fantastical, detailed works are presented in highly contrasted hand-drawn pieces that can be seen in and around the city, from murals and package design to commercial and public spaces.

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Armani Howard
Born and based in Chicago, Armani Howard grooms bodies of work to portray growth through time and reflection, guided by the discovery of self throughout his explorations. A basis in contemporary folklore becomes the driving force piloting his map as he moves freely within an expansive field of aesthetic issues and cultural inspirations. The conversation of organic and technical is an abiding force, punctuated by his worldly travels.

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Blake Matthews
“My photos are simply moments captured with friends. Whether it be skating, hanging out or exploring new places, I'm just lucky to see it through a camera lens”

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Darius Airo
Currently studying at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Darius Airo focuses his most recent pieces on environmental issues, binding image-based painting with his own landscape to form an introspective and responsive narrative. The work considers American cartoons and alternative commercial imagery that imbue low-income Chicago neighborhoods, and a line of image-based painting that glorifies a vast canon. These ideas about image-making, paired with the artist's Chicago hewn identity, form a lively dialogue with the landscape and figures that populate his art.

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O.J. Hays
A creative force in Chicago's art, music and skateboarding scenes, OJ Hays' colorful and playful works combine elements of Illustration, animation, and live performance. Recently, he has become involved in a variety of youth programs, fostering creative education through a very unique perspective.

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Nikko Washington
Raised and shaped by the landscape and culture of Chicago's Hyde Park, Nikko Washington has been creating art since he can remember, beginning with drawing, painting, and finally, graphic design and screen-printing. Washington's introspective work often focuses on gentrification and displacement. Themes the artist experiences in his life and with those closest to him. The artist's particular aesthetic enhances his individual work and role as Artistic Director for the Chicago hip-hop collective, Savemoney.

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