A Day out With Ojitos, Pilsen’s “Wheatpaste Queen”

The blue-haired girl is everywhere in Pilsen. She’d might as well be its most eligible bachelorette. Sometimes her face changes—angry, confused, smiling like she knows something you don’t. But her trademark large, expressive eyes, long lashes, and blue, wavy hair are everywhere on the walls, grates, and lampposts of Damen, Ashland, and Cermak, the thoroughfares that make up Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. The woman behind them is Ojitos, a wheatpaste artist and painter who’s become the wheatpaste queen of Pilsen. 

I first saw Ojitos’s stickers on a trip to Chicago in spring of 2023 for Expo Chicago, the city’s major art fair. Max Gonzales, a prominent graffiti writer in Pittsburgh, is another Pilsen local and pointed me to the neighborhood. The streets are narrow, with an old-school Bohemian feeling of delis, row houses, and small galleries all bunched together. When I returned to Chicago in the fall, I met up with Ojitos to learn more about her wheatpastes and stickers. They’re whimsical and feminine, but give an air of “do no harm, but take no shit.” She’s all over the neighborhood, too.  

The woman behind them is Ojitos, a wheatpaste artist and painter who’s become the wheatpaste queen of Pilsen. 

 

Her father was Blinks, a Chicago graffiti writer who chose his moniker because people always made fun of his eyelashes. Ojitos inherited those—ojitos means “little eyes” in Spanish. “My grandma always used to say ‘give me ojitos!’” she said, and fluttered her eyes to demonstrate. Ojitos, does not, in fact, have blue hair. “But I always wanted it!” She said. “My mom wouldn’t let me. So I made the character based on that.” She also drew from indie darling Ramona Flowers, the heroine of the Scott Pilgrim movies, and Betty Boop for the large, fluttery lashes she gives her character. 

Her father was Blinks, a Chicago graffiti writer who chose his moniker because people always made fun of his eyelashes. Ojitos inherited those—ojitos means “little eyes” in Spanish. “My grandma always used to say ‘give me ojitos!’”

The character sometimes has traditional Maya headwear on, inspired by Ojitos’s Mexican heritage and Pilsen’s predominantly Mexican community. Sometimes she makes stickers just of feathered snakes from Central American mythology. One is a three-eyed armadillo in lime green, light blue, pink, and orange patterns. One thing is clear about Ojitos from spending time with her: She’s a dreamer with a big imagination. Characters like Ramona Flowers appealed to her for their free-spirited-ness. But she also loves the kitsch of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, who she paints frequently. When she went to Miami, she was inspired to paint Astro Boy as Tony Montana from Scarface. Her work mixes pop culture and mythology, tied together by her imagination and playfulness. 

We stopped at a Mexican bakery, Panaderia El Acambaro, to load up on pan dulce. The bakery was the kind where you could stack a whole tray, and Ojitos encouraged me to get as much as I wanted. We filled a tray with conchas and puerquitos. In Washington Heights, where I grew up, these bakeris were everywhere, but in Pittsburgh, they’re a lot harder to find. Pilsen reminded me of New York, and the insularity and character a neighborhood can have. Ojitos is a Pilsen local and often wheatpastes on places she frequented. “People used to wild out at this bar!” she said of one nightclub we passed, looking a little sad during daytime hours. “That includes me,” she added, bashfully.  

One thing is clear about Ojitos from spending time with her: She’s a dreamer with a big imagination.

Ojitos started wheatpasting with a close friend, Nine Seven Eight. Their characters show up together on Pilsen’s walls—he depicts himself as a goat. He encouraged her to grow her art practice when he saw the stickers she made. “He told me ‘do what you’re already doing, but bigger,’” she said. “We hit windows and people would be all like ‘you can’t be there!’ But out on the street, people recognize him more and not me.” As we walked around, we saw a local business owner painting over graffiti on a grate. Ojitos politely greeted him—no harm done. In Pilsen, while graffiti and street art is a huge part of the neighborhood, it also sometimes gets tied to local gang violence, so you have to watch your back, Ojitos explained. “But because I’m a girl, I have an advantage that gangs just leave me alone,” she said. 

 

Sometimes people do take her wheatpastes down or tag over them, but it’s rare, and she just gets back up again. “I noticed that when she’s angry, people take her down more,” she said. Just like in real life, women’s anger is less acceptable. But when the character has a luchador mask or glamorous sunglasses on, it’s hard for anyone to touch her.  

Ojitos had been manifesting doing a mural at the time we spoke, and that dream had just come true at Pizza Cantina on 18th Street. She was wheatpasting outside the business and the owner came out to talk to her. “I thought she was going to upset,’ Ojitos said. “But she asked me to do a mural inside of her restaurant!” In the mural, she painted her trademark mix of pop culture symbols and Mexican-inspired imagery. At the very top, a feathered serpent flies through the air next to the Pink Line El train that snakes through Pilsen. The one-eyed heart from reggaeton artist Bad Bunny and Hello Kitty sit beside a woman in a jaguar luchador mask. 

Ojitos had been manifesting doing a mural at the time we spoke, and that dream had just come true at Pizza Cantina on 18th Street.

In some of her wheatpastes, Ojitos gives her character a third eye, the blue eye known as the nazar that protects you from evil and brings good will. Maybe Ojitos’s character is looking out for her—and for everybody—in Pilsen. She’s certainly on enough walls to keep tabs on people in the neighborhood. But from dreaming of muraling to making it happen, it’s clear that Ojitos can do anything she puts her mind to.