Craig Cundiff & Sam Sneke (Craig website, Craig Instagram ; Sneke Instragram)
Location: 2226 3rd Avenue
Artist Statement 
(click to listen to the description)
This is where the artist statement is written
More information (click to listen to the description)
Some collaborations work because the two people involved are similar. This one works because they couldn’t be more different — and both of them knew it.
The mural by Craig Cundiff and Seattle graffiti legend Sneke is one of the most culturally loaded works in the Belltown Mural Festival, precisely because it brings two distinct worlds of wall art into genuine conversation with each other. Sneke has been putting his name on Seattle’s streets for 35 years — a figure whose work has been met, depending on who you ask, with dismay or delight. Craig brings a different tradition: formal, composed, with a sailor and water imagery anchoring the street-level edge of the piece. Together they built something neither would have made alone.
The scale alone is worth noting. This is the largest piece Sneke has ever done, and that fact sits inside the work itself — a graffiti artist whose entire practice has lived in stolen moments and tight spaces, suddenly given room to fully stretch out. The festival made that possible, and the result is a composition that genuinely celebrates both artists’ styles without either one swallowing the other.
Sneke’s contribution to Belltown’s walls doesn’t stop here either. Along with a crew including Arup, Hughes, and Myth, he spent late nights that same week adding four new pieces near the Espo mural on First Avenue — working after hours, respecting what was already there, and leaving something fresh behind.
This is what it looks like when street art and public art stop pretending they’re separate things.
Back to the Belltown Murals: map, overview web page