Today in street art: The Drip Invitational brings murals, graffiti and home cooking to the Pittsburgh neighborhood

Ironically, The Drip Invitational — a live art event prominently featuring graffiti — was inspired by a complaint to the city about graffiti. Geoffrey Milspaw, who owns 727 Humphries St., received a citation from the city of Atlanta for graffiti on his building; many municipalities consider graffiti to be a public nuisance contributing to urban blight. The way Atlanta’s code is written, when a complaint is made, a city inspector has significant leeway to determine if paint on a building is art or if it’s a public nuisance that the property owner must remove. 

Chris Wright, also known as Chris Makes Art, was last year’s co-host of The Atlanta Crossroads Mural Festival, which transformed the walls of buildings in the same neighborhood. Milspaw reached out to Wright, hoping the artist could turn the so-called public nuisance graffiti on his building into art in order to abide by the city’s regulations. This golden opportunity presented Chris with a site for his latest live painting event, The Drip Invitational, which debuted from October 3 through October 5, 2025.

For Wright, the word drip has a double meaning. “I was cycling through different names, and I thought of drip — I’m always dripping paint,” said Wright. “When you say ‘you have some good drip,’ it’s a slang term for how you look.” This is particularly true when it comes to clothing or accessories. The name was cemented when Wright, who is also a shrewd businessman, found that “The Drip Invitational” appears in the coveted No. 1 position on Google. 

The Drip Invitational is part of a growing shift for Atlanta street art events in that it features a mix of both murals and graffiti — many live painting festivals feature either one or the other. “In my mission statement, it’s very important because the origins of street art wouldn’t exist without people who paved the way, and that has its roots in graffiti,” said Wright. “For me, it’s important to have [both] represented in my event.” 

Many of these new works along Humphries Street were sprayed by the Atlanta Dank Mob (ADM) crew. A graffiti crew is a close-knit group of writers who share a common style, cultural identity or artistic goal. At last year’s Atlanta Crossroads Mural Festival, the ADM crew painted on the same wall with a common color palette. For The Drip Invitational, ADM provided a graffiti component, with each piece sporting a unique color scheme.

Another special aspect of The Drip Invitational was the home-cooked meals. Wright’s girlfriend Judy Levy — who goes by @gastronerdy on social media — staffed a hospitality tent that provided meals for the artists throughout the three-day event. “I want to take care of the artists as best I can, and if I can’t shell out a lot of money to pay for people’s time, at least I can leave them with an experience where they feel like they were cared about and their time was appreciated,” Wright explained.

The murals and graffiti, which now cover the walls of 727 Humphries St., are certainly beautiful to view, but the works gain more significance when you learn the stories behind them. 

Chris Makes Art has a bold, colorful, humorous and sometimes confrontational style. In this new mural he created for The Drip, Chris makes a statement about holding his own in the inherently impermanent world of street art.

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On-the-spot improvisation was required for Alex Ferror’s piece, because a last-minute reassignment didn’t suit his original design. “This mural is about carrying your memories and carrying a universe inside of yourself,” explained Ferror. “If you see inside of [the main character], there is a whole new story being told. And that is an analogy for how we are in our lives.”

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Just in time for Halloween, Big Teeff’s mural depicts Ed Gein, the notorious serial killer and ghoulish grave robber from Plainfield, Wisconsin, who inspired the 1959 book Psycho by Robert Bloch. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film adaptation of Psycho later became a horror classic.

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“My parents instilled a love of nature and hiking in me at a young age, so I created this piece to honor that love and bring some nature into the urban context of Atlanta,” said H Dawg who goes by the moniker CREEP. “I have always enjoyed the work of Bob Ross, and I drew inspiration from his landscape paintings to create this piece.”

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Das.BK, also known as Das Fuerst, initially focused on style writing until he saw how people interact more with characters and environments than with text. The mouse in his mural represents himself: “This guy’s just adventurous. He’s got a paint roller in his hand. Got a spray can in his pocket. He’s just sitting in his world, happy he’s a mouse. And that’s me today.”

Brooke Farewell painted her mural extemporaneously. “I wanted to make some type of elder God, psychedelic, surrealist painting that was a little bit creepy and a little weird, [that] felt massive and larger-than-life and trippy, kind of reaching from the depths.”

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In his previous career, Colin Russell, also known as Ghost Town, worked several different jobs in the coffee business. “Something about the community of it, or the culture of it, or something about coffee specifically has always stuck with me. And I really love being able to incorporate it into mural work.” Ghost Town also shared his love for coffee by brewing up a large pot for painters at the festival’s food tent.

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Nales BTR created a Halloween-themed graffiti piece for the inaugural event. “I really have been loving the revival of the vintage Halloween look, growing up watching all the classic slashers. Halloween seems to slowly be taking a bit of a dive in participants, so I wanted to inspire [people] with a pumpkin and vintage Halloween piece.”

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Cameron Moore, also known as Yoyocam, memorialized two fellow artists’ dogs that recently crossed the rainbow bridge. “They’re going to be dog astronauts fighting crime in space. I feel like they were such cool dogs, so that’s probably what they’re doing right now in the afterlife.” 

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Dannie Niu designed her piece to reflect her Chinese heritage without invoking stereotypes. “I decided to paint a ‘Beijing Opera girl’ and added a bubble gum element — a small, playful touch meant to bridge the distance between Chinese and American cultures.”

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In a full-circle moment, this festival that was born out of a graffiti complaint prompted a new graffiti complaint to the police during the event itself. The officers arrived and quickly determined that no laws were being broken. In that moment, something magical happened: A police officer expressed curiosity about the event, and one of the writers put a can in the officer’s hand and gave him an impromptu graffiti lesson there on the spot. 

I believe that moments like this prove that if the public had a better understanding of graffiti and street art in general, much of the stigma surrounding the art form might be lifted. Annual street art and graffiti events like The Drip Invitational promote exactly that type of understanding, and, in my opinion, we need more of them.

Editor’s note: The author of this article regularly tracks street art in Atlanta and has produced a full, self-guided walking tour of the Pittsburgh neighborhood, accessible here.

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Arthur Rudick created the Atlanta Street Art Map in 2017 after retiring from a successful career as an engineer with Eastman Kodak and the Coca-Cola Company. His first experience of art was seeing an Alexander Calder mobile as a child in the Pittsburgh airport. Rudick is ArtsATL’s street art expert and a regular contributor.