A highly developed visual system coded in letterforms and style, left as a blueprint for future generations.
Twin Cities Illest / Train Champs Inc. is a landmark mural project honoring the originators and innovators of graffiti in the Upper Midwest. Focused on the pioneering members of the TCI (Twin Cities Illest) crew and their connection to the AKB crew, many of whom began painting illegally in the 1980s and early 1990s, this project recognizes graffiti as a significant regional form of contemporary painting rooted in both cultural legacy and visual innovation.
The Twin Cities Illest crew is composed of multigenerational artists whose painted work shaped a visual language long before "street art" became a marketing term. From blackbooks to freight trains, tunnels to gallery walls, their contributions form a living lineage-still active, still evolving, still studied, debated, and reinterpreted.
This public work tells the story of graffiti as an advancing art form-a language of resistance, beauty, and creative autonomy. What emerges is not a nostalgic tribute, but a living archive: a highly developed visual system coded in letterforms and style, left as a blueprint for future generations.
