Exhibits

STILL CRAZY: 40 Years of the Crazy IN Style Artists

Bachman Gallery

1040 Ridge Road, Munster, INSeptember 11 - November 14, 2026

Artist Reception: Saturday, October 10, 3-6pm

In the early nineteen-seventies, when New York City was busy declaring bankruptcy, fiscal and otherwise, its teenagers were drafting a parallel ledger on brick and steel. Armed with fat markers and pilfered rattle cans, they wrote their names into the margins of the city: on alley walls, roll-down gates, and, most spectacularly, on subway cars that shuttled their aliases through the boroughs like emissaries. The courts called it vandalism. The writers called it being seen. What began as tags - cryptic signatures paired with street numbers - evolved into something more operatic, a self-aware art movement that grew alongside hip-hop and, by the mid-eighties, found itself paradoxically celebrated in galleries even as the city spent millions attempting to scrub it away.

Far from the mythologized skyscrapers of Manhattan, a group of young Latino artists in Northwest Indiana were paying attention. The region, steel mills coughing into the lakefront sky, neighborhoods calibrated to shift changes, rarely makes anyone’s travel itinerary. A quintessential example of the ‘fly-over states,” it is a place people drive through, not to. And yet it was here, amid viaducts and factory walls, that the Crazy Indiana Style Artists, or CISA, took shape.

 They did not materialize from art school critiques or foundation grants. Their classrooms were alleys; their résumés, walls. In its early days, the collective - then known as the IN Style Artists - was a loose confederation of nearly a hundred (graffiti) writers locked in a rigorous, reputation-driven exchange. Letters mattered. Nerve mattered. Showing up mattered most. What began as raw, sometimes illegal assertion matured into a multigenerational conversation about public space: not as backdrop but as forum.

 Over four decades, CISA’s practice expanded beyond graffiti’s adrenaline rush into murals, installations, music, and mentorship. There is no singular “CISA style,” which is precisely the point. Painters work beside DJs; photographers beside dancers. The ethos is consistent - raw over refined, expression over approval - even as the forms shift. Members such as Ishmael “Ish” Muhammad Nieves, Felix “Flex” Maldonado Jr., and Geraldo “OMEN74” Guevarra have stewarded the collective without sanding down its edges, insisting that growth need not entail amnesia.

 Still Crazy: 40 Years of the Crazy IN Style Artists, a new exhibition curated by Nieves and Maldonado, gathers more than fifty works and unveils eight new murals scaled to twenty-foot gallery walls. The show nods to influences like Keith Haring while keeping its center of gravity firmly Midwestern. If the white cube once kept graffiti at arm’s length, here the gallery feels less like a domestication than an extension of the street.

 Outside, in neighborhoods long shortchanged by investment and attention, CISA’s murals continue to operate as declarations rather than decorations. They address identity, humor, pressure, and pride without romanticizing hardship. In a region that has lived in Chicago’s shadow, the collective’s message is neither plaintive nor polite. It is large, chromatic, and insistent: We are here. We matter

Atrium GallerY
1040 Ridge Road, Munster, IN

Gratitude: a solo exhibition by Arturo Miramontes

September 5 - October 31, 2026
Artist Reception: Thursday, Sepetember 17, 6–8PM

Artist Talk: Monday, September 28, at 10AM

Gratitude is a celebration of memory, heritage, faith, family, and the enduring strength of the human spirit. Born in Momax, Zacatecas, Mexico, and a longtime resident of Northwest Indiana, Arturo Miramontes draws from the layered experiences of the Mexican-American and Chicano communities to create paintings that are both deeply personal and broadly human. Through realistic and symbolic imagery, bold color, and dynamic compositions, Miramontes reflects on histories of struggle, migration, perseverance, freedom, and self-determination, from the legacy of the Spanish conquest to the ongoing search for identity and belonging in the United States. His work carries the conviction of an artist who paints not only what he sees, but what he believes, remembers, and holds dear.

At the heart of Gratitude is an appreciation for the people, experiences, and opportunities that have shaped Miramontes's life and artistic journey. Family remains a powerful source of inspiration, reflected in works such as Small Hopes, in which his young son holds a globe as a symbol of possibility and the dreams of a new generation. The exhibition honors Miramontes's humble beginnings while recognizing the determination that has carried him forward as an artist, father, immigrant, and American. Each painting becomes an expression of thankfulness, for heritage and homeland, for family and faith, for teachers and mentors, and for the freedom to pursue a creative life. Gratitude invites viewers to encounter an artist whose work transforms personal history into a vivid and enduring testament to resilience, hope, and the courage to keep dreaming.

Sponsored by

In Memory of Ugo Arrighi
Major & DenisE Dillard 

ARE YOU AN ARTIST?

More than 15 exhibitions fill four South Shore Arts galleries each year, showcasing regional, national and international artists and cultures. If you are an artist interested in exhibiting with South Shore Arts, submit your exhibit proposal here or contact Brandon Johnson, Gallery Coordinator, at Brandon@southshoreartsonline.org

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• logo and credit line on signage at exhibit
• logo and/or credit line in publicity and promotion
• opportunities for corporate entertaining throughout the exhibit

Contact Sandie Phalen, Director of Marketing and Development
219/836.1839, ext.101
 

© All images are copyrighted by the respective artists.