BOSTON ARTIST WELCOMES BACK
THE ICONIC CITGO SIGN
Former Boston Phoenix illustrator Kevin Banks will attend the November 19, 2026 celebration of Boston’s iconic CITGO sign at 660 Beacon Street in Kenmore Square bringing a unique tribute of his own.

Banks’s mixed-media series reimagines the iconic sign through surrealist collage, replacing its familiar triangular design with a variety of unexpected images — including raw meat. Part visual pun and punk satire, the artwork offers a Brutalist take on one of Boston’s most recognizable landmarks. The series reimagines the icon as a collection of 24 × 24-inch, three-dimensional mixed-media artworks infused with Kenmore’s true punk-rock identity.
The CITGO sign watches over Kenmore Square as Boston reinvents itself. In the 1970s and ’80s, the neighborhood became a center of the city’s alternative culture. Directly across the square, The Rat became a legendary punk-rock club from 1972 to 1997. Down the street, The Boston Phoenix chronicled the music, the people, and the scene. The clubs have closed, the Phoenix is gone, and Boston has changed  — but the CITGO sign endures as the meaty heart muscle of Kenmore.
Banks’s artwork appeared regularly on the covers of the Boston Phoenix, Boston Herald, and Weekly Dig. He brings his own interpretation of that landmark into the spotlight as the sign prepares to light up the Boston skyline once again. Part smirk, part homage, the series offers an irreverent tribute to a familiar Boston landmark.
Medium: Paint, Wood, Prints, Varnish, and Dunkin' Donuts Coffee.
View the artwork at SPEC.I.MEN Book Shop in Norwood, MA. Banks will be in-store to sign Citgo prints, shirts, and copies of his book November 21, 2026, from 1:00–2:00. 


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MEDIA CONTACT
kevin@claymoregoboom.com
617.922.6022

ABOUT KEVIN BANKS
Kevin Banks is a Boston-based artist, writer, and former art director at The Boston Phoenix, a graduate of the School of Visual Arts NYC, and five-time NEPA award-winner. His work has maintained a long-standing creative connection to Boston’s iconic CITGO sign. He is the author of the 2025 memoir SLOANE: The Art School Underworld of ’80s NYC. Banks is principal of Claymore Design and former design faculty at Suffolk University.

ABOUT SPEC.I.MEN
spec•i•men is an independent gallery, bookshop, and studio dedicated to art, publishing, music, and the artifacts of underground and independent culture. The name reflects its curatorial philosophy: a specimen as a distinctive work or object that captures a particular artist, movement, community, or moment in time — something worth discovering, preserving, and sharing.
Address: 61 Endicott St., Bldg. 23
Unit 101, Norwood, MA 02062.
Contact: specimenstudios@gmail.com.
@spec.i.men.studios

The most used word in the English language is time.
And we're running out of it.

INSPECTING THE DECONSTRUCTION

SHEPARD FAIREY AND KEVIN BANKS AT THE BOSTON PHOENIX

Special thanks to Trevor Gendron, The Kenmore Square Association, 660 Beacon Street, and Mayor Michelle Wu for their time and generosity supporting this project.