If you know anything about Wesley Willis, you’re probably familiar with him as a quirky, hilarious and ultra-prolific songwriter performing as both a solo artist and with the punk-fueled Wesley Willis Fiasco. Willis, diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989, gained a cult following in the 1990’s preforming songs like “I Wupped Batman’s Ass,” ”Kurt Cobain,” and, perhaps most famously, “Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonalds” to list just a few.

Here’s some footage of The Wesley Willis Fiasco from 1995:
 

 
But before the acclaim, before Wesley Willis’ records were being released by Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles, before he was touring the country and before he was appearing on MTV in the mid-nineties, Willis spent years making wonderful pieces of pen and ink street art with a whimsical and strange outsider sensibility capturing cityscapes from his native Chicago.

Here’s just a small sample of Willis’ compelling visual art:
 

 

 

 
In the short piece below we see a young Willis (right around the age of 25) in 1988 making art in the loop area of downtown Chicago. He comes across as a sweet guy totally absorbed in the in the intricacy of his fantastic drawings. He talks about the “dream cars” that appear as recurring images in his pieces and we see him talking with people on the street about his work. Willis’ father and brothers are interviewed and his drawings are shown in the act of creation. This is nice, intimate portrait of the artist featuring very rare footage, and any fan of his music will get a more complete picture of the lifelong creative force that drove Wesley Willis by watching the clip below.

Willis was the subject of two feature length documentaries called Wesley Willis: The Daddy of Rock ‘N’ Roll from 2003 and Wesley Willis’s Joyrides from 2008. He died at the age of 40 in 2003 due to complications from leukemia. Katy Perry namechecks Willis in her song, “Simple”: “You’re such a poet. I wish I could be Wesley Willis.”