TUBS: Calligraffiti

Tubs is a Chicago-born and based street artist who specializes in calligraphy and graffiti styles. Growing up in the Southwest side of the city, Tubs grew up surrounded by street art and fashion culture. However, he was inspired to become an artist not by the myriad street art that surrounded him during his childhood, but by his parents, both of whom were also artists.

In an interview with Chicago Sun-Times, Tubs admitted that even at a very young age his mother did not allow him to go play with his friends outside until he had finished practicing his penmanship for the day. It was his mother who taught him various calligraphy styles, a discipline that has stuck with him ever since his childhood and has found its way into his mature artworks today.

As a first-generation Chicago-born citizen, Tubs has seen firsthand the struggles his Mexican parents had to go through as American immigrants. While his mother specialized in calligraphy, his father was a more traditional painter, specializing in portraits and landscapes. At the age of six, Tubs became better acquainted with graffiti art, of which there was no shortage in the streets of Southside Chicago.

As his skills evolved, the inspiration he took from graffiti opened up a new chapter in the young artist’s life. As he became a teenager, he fully embraced Chicago’s street art and culture scene and started painting all kinds of things across the walls of the city.  While he admits to being influenced by gang graffiti art, he distanced himself from that entire scene in order to be taken seriously as an artist.

Tubs is inspired by the artistic soul of the people in the poor areas of Chicago, who have no other outlet other than to paint the walls with stylized lettering and graffiti art murals. He remarks that the single greatest benefit of that entire artistic scene is that you don’t have to appease influential people in the art industry. Nor is anyone trying to censor Chicago street artists.

From a young age, his street art style evolved to amalgamate a myriad of artistic styles and sensibilities. While Tubs admits that his art is extremely Mexican influenced, he also suggests that the stylings of both Chicago graffiti art and Islamic calligraphy have come together to create his unique, and now very influential, style.

Recently, Tubs painted a mural on the Near West Side as a gesture towards the Mexican Day of the Dead. The mural features a giant skull painted on a stylistic backdrop of names painted with the sensibilities of both a Chicago graffiti artist and an Islamic calligraphy artist. He calls the skull ‘El Campesino” which translates to the fieldworker, while the names are of those people who have died of the coronavirus.

Tubs’ aim with the mural was not just to express himself through his myriad influences, but to honor the families of the people who had lost loved ones to the pandemic. Clearly, this street artist is more than just a street artist as he gains influence and recognition worldwide for many of his captivating murals. Tubs has proven himself to be a unique artist who places his social work before his art and uses his talent and expression to bring light to the deeper cultural ties that hold the people of Chicago together.