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Leading up to our big 2-year anniversary show, we're going to share bios on each of the participating artists with a preview of one of their works for the show.

Today we feature Martin Whatson: Martin Whatson (b. 1984) is a Norwegian born and based stencil artist. While studying Art and Graphic design at Westerdals School of Communication, Oslo, he discovered stencils and the urban art scene. After following graffiti and its development, he started his own stencil production 10 years ago in the winter of 2004.

Martin has a continuous urge to search for beauty in what is commonly dismissed as ugly, out of style or simply left behind. He looks for inspiration in people, city landscapes, old buildings, graffiti, posters and decaying walls. This interest for decay has helped develop his style, motives and composition and he enjoys creating either unity or conflict between materials, backgrounds and human intervention. His artistic expression started more political, but has developed into a more subtle expression blending graffiti, stencil art and decay together. Inspired by artist like Jose Parlá and Cy Twombly, his abstract graffiti and stencils are a mix of urban scenes showing the development of a walls lifetime. He use grey tones as a foundation but adds vibrant colors to break the monochrome concrete expression and bring a splash of life to his work. Since his artistic debut in 2004, he has had several solo shows and participated in many group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.

Leading up to our big 2-year anniversary show, we're going to share bios on each of the participating artists with a preview of one of their works for the show.

Today we feature Chad Hasegawa: Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Chad Hasegawa was enthralled with graffiti and the art of the Mission School. He moved to San Francisco in 2000 and received a BFA in advertising from the Academy of Art University. He worked for top agencies, including Venables Bell & Partners and Goodby Silverstein & Partners. After leaving advertising, he concentrated on creating murals on the streets, and painting canvases for both commercial and non-profit gallery exhibitions. He quickly gained recognition for his bold and colorful latex paint brush strokes that pushed the boundaries of public art.

Participating in, and having been influence by, the graffiti community taught Chad to be resourceful with paint and supplies. His self-taught use of color aggressively shapes an object so that it is clearly visible when viewed from a far. Up close, the work can be viewed as an elaborate color design—an almost mosaic pointillism of brick-like shapes.

He is strongly influenced by Vincent Van Gogh and Keith Haring, as well as Franz Kline and the New York School. These artists' work helped him discover the subject matter that fits his unique style: the aggressively large, abstract body shape and beautifully brown colored bear. In addition to their reputation of being fiercely protective of their young, bears are highly respected in many cultures and are considered to be ancestral spirits. Each of his bear paintings is created with the intent of being a protector; personally for himself and for everyone that may come across his work.

Leading up to our big 2-year anniversary show, we're going to share bios on each of the participating artists with a preview of one of their works for the show.

Today we feature ETNIK: Etnik is an Italian-Swedish street artist. Etnik developed his artistic talent living in Florence in the 80’s before he was attracted to the underground culture of graffiti art. While his studio is in Florence, his work takes him further abroad in Europe, and also to America, where he searches for the most innovative scenes.

Ten years ago he began his current project, his “Prospective Cities” series, which defines the majority of his work today. Each work imagines a different floating ‘3-D’ city, amidst a changing sea of shapes, colors, and perspective. The artist sees the city as the theater of his actions and as the subject of his art. The result is a production that mixes fantasy with a critical interpretation of big urban environments and their peculiar constructions.

Etnik has exhibited in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Munich, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Monaco and Torino. He participated in our ARTmageddon holiday group show and we are excited to feature his work in our 2 year anniversary show. Keep posted for an upcoming mural in Chicago!

Follow Etnik on Instagram: ALESSANDROETNIK

Leading up to our big 2-year anniversary show opening on April 3rd, we're going to share bios on each of the participating artists with a preview of one of their works for the show.

Today we feature M-City: M-City (Mariusz Waras) born 1978 in Gdynia, Poland. A graphic artist, outdoor painter, traveler and amateur architect, he graduated from the Department of Graphic Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk where he is currently assistant lecturer in Prof. Jerzy Ostrogórski's painting studio. He is the author of the m-city project including several hundred murals. His work focuses on urban space.

His murals may be seen in the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk, Berlin, Paris, Rotterdam, Gent, Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Bolzano, London, Bogota, Barcelona, Valencia, Florence, Bergamo, Milan, Ancona and Prague. His gallery exhIbitions include individual and group exhibitions at the Galerie Itinerrance in Paris (2010), the Brooklynite Gallery in New York (2010), the Carmichael Gallery in LA (2010), the Traffic Gallery in Bergamo (2012, 2008), the Arsenal in Poznań (2005) and the CSW Laźnia in Gdańsk (2006). In 2008 he was invited by Banksy to the Cans Festival in London, and later that year included by the international street art expert Tristan Manco in the official list of the world's most important artists of stencil-graffiti.

Leading up to our big 2-year anniversary show, we're going to share bios on each of the participating artists with a preview of one of their works for the show.

Today we feature Bachor: A graduate of the Center for Creative Studies in downtown Detroit, former Michigander Jim Bachor has lived in Chicago now for 27 years.

Bachor’s fervor for mosaic art was born in 1998 when he first traveled to Europe and enveloped himself in the culture of London, Rome and Paris. Then for two months in 1999, Jim rented a house in Rome, exploring the ancient sites of the city and surrounding countryside. Inspired to learn more about his newly found infatuation, later that same year Jim went back to Italy and took classes in Ravenna on the demanding and meticulous art form. During subsequent archaeology-based trips to Greece, Turkey and even a dig in Pompeii, he was amazed by the various examples of 2,000 year-old art buried deep in the ground. Marble and glass don't fade so mosaics look exactly as intended by the artist who originally produced them. Jim has adapted this ancient art form to contemporary American life, capturing everyday scenes in a way that, centuries from now, will open a window onto life in the 21st century.

Beginning in May 2013, Jim began to apply this thinking to the numerous potholes filling the streets of Chicago. Temporarily fixed over and over again by city street crews he began to apply this resilient artwork as a more permanent fix. Early concepts of the artwork first installed branded the pothole as an authentic Chicago-style pothole. Further explorations played with serial numbers (to represent the vast quantities of them), phone numbers of nearby auto repair shops (to repair damage caused by them) and even flowers (as a pretty juxtaposition to the universally ugly pothole.) He is continuing the project again this year.