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The Stencil Archive project has been in San Francisco since the beginning. The streets of this city were filled with stencils in the mid-1990s, making fertile ground for collecting photographs, making stencils, and sharing it all through words, walks, and other ways of expression. The main section of the City that holds the most stencil history is the Mission District. Haight Street (the locals break this down to Upper and Lower Haight, while tourists know Upper Haight as the Haight Ashbury) comes in second. Makes sense that Stencil Archive was first thought up and created in the Mission District.

Since around 2012, Stencil Archive HQ has been in the Western Addition, a large swath of San Francisco that has smaller neighborhood names. First we were up in NoPa, a newer name for North of the Panhandle. Then we moved down the hill a bit to Divisadero Street, a main shopping corridor for this part of the City. Now, we are in Japantown, just off Fillmore Street and below Pacific Heights. Haight Street is also part of the Western Addition, but the Stencil Archives have been split up a bit due to the volume of images from Haight and Divis.

Finally(!), we have upgraded one of the geographic stencil archives for San Francisco, beginning with a smaller one for the Western Addition. This archive also includes images from Lone Mountain, USF, the Panhandle, as well as Pacific Heights, Fillmore District (and Street), Japantown, and maybe a few other nooks of this section of San Francisco.

We hope to focus on a few more manageably-sized SF archives this week, so keep an eye out for fresh images and filenames that explain more about what you may be looking at.

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The Canadian Stencil Archive, and supporting Canadian artists archives, were on the update list about 6-8 weeks ago, but things took a turn towards focusing on archives that needed fresh new image(s) upload. While we'll focus on another much-needed archive upload this weekend, the Canadian archives got worked through over the week. Sadly, there are only a few new uploads here/there coming from the Great White North, and our travels have not sent us that way in a while. Would love to see that change in the near future!

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Prior to uplading the new work, the Stencil Archive subfolders were updated. Tennessee's archive had quite a bit of photos from about 20 years ago up to the present, and two artists' work were pulled into new archives. A 2008 Banksy piece in New Orleans was missed back then, and found thanks to the exterior wall holding that piece now being inside a business, protected by a fence. Banksy Hates Me finally gets a new archive thanks to catching about three works in New Orleans. 

Keep wandering and discovering out there!

• Josh Wingerter (New Orleans) 
• Banksy in New Orleans (2008) - caged and in the wild
• Peat EYEZ
• >NEW< Banksy Hates Me (NY)
• >NEW< blamb (TN) from 2003 or earlier
• >NEW< CeeDaMessenger (New Orleans)
• >NEW< PoetryByBoots (IL)
• >NEW< submit (TN) from 2003 or earlier

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The trip idea started while reading a book about Cahokia, a World Heritage Site just outside of St. Louis, MO. The idea became a spring break trip, which happened to be the same week as the last North American total eclipse for a few decades. Add some big easy New Orleans to the trip, and it was a Mississippi River fun time. 

Part one of the photos snapped on this roadtrip are by artists and painters unknown. You know who you are!

• New Orleans
• Missouri (mostly St. Louis)
• Memphis, Tennessee

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We were not planning on updating the Austrian Stencil Archive at this time, but we did after getting inspired by an email submission from a dear friend in Graz, AT. He sent one he snapped, and a few others from BeneRegoef, who immediately got followed on the social streams. Now that Reddit has decided to not allow images to be saved off of their site, X/Twitter remains one of the last socials standing where images are had. Part of this site's updating phase is to try to add photo credit as much as possible, as you will see clicking through and enjoying the small but enjoyable Austrian archive.

By Isabella Kwai
New York Times
3/31/2024

Isabella Kwai spoke to street artists, developers and real estate advisers from several cities for this article. 

Julian Phethean’s first canvas in London was a shed in his backyard where he covered the walls with bold lettering in spray paint. When he moved his art to the city’s streets in the 1980s, it was largely unwelcome — and he was even arrested a few times. 

“We had nowhere to practice,” he said. “It was just seen as vandalism.” 

These days, the canvases come to Mr. Phethean, better known as the muralist Mr Cenz. Recent facades, which he shares with his sizable following, have included an abstract mural on a Tesla showroom and a portrait of Biggie Smalls, sponsored by Pepsi Max. 

“I never would have envisioned that I’d be able to do it for a living,” he said. 

Landlords wanting to attract young professionals once scrubbed off the rebellious scrawls. That was before graffiti moved from countercultural to mainstream. Now building owners are willing to pay for it. 

From Berlin to London to Miami, the wider acceptance of graffiti has attracted developers looking to expand into trendy areas, companies wanting to relocate to hipper neighborhoods and brands seeking creative ways to advertise their products. 

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The largest new wave stencil archive to date - New York City, with a bit of NY state thrown in - is complete, with about a dozen new images added at the end of the tedious updating.

I have wandered the streets many times in New York City and can never get enough of what is going on. Sure, things have changed over the decades, and I have found less-interesting stencils during my more recent perambulations. I'm a bit confused when I visit Williamsburg, where ruins by the river used to be full of all kinds of street art. Now there are shiny tall buildings with amazing views. Things change, especially in NYC.

But, during my last, very short trip to NYC, I found stencils. And I have to once again mention that Jaime Rojo keeps discovering interesting works while he snaps up all things fun for Brooklyn Street Art. Deep respect to him, and to the folks that keep putting up stencils in the streets over in the Big Apple.

I'll always return, and I'll always keep up the stencil hunt.

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Possibly the nexus for all things stencils and street art, France hit the wave early enough to see all the possibilities of the stencil technique as well as the many variations of contemporary public art and muralismo. Paris walls remain covered with messages, signs, jokes, statements, and images, but many other parts of the country keep walls running as well. The French stencil archive is now new wave, updated, and ready for your longing gazes.

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With just one recent image to upload (shown), the Stencil Archive for Spain has been updated. 

Over the years, filename formats have varied, but the final format was only decided about 5-7 years ago. The Spanish archive goes back to the beginning of the project, so filenames can be anything from "ESBarc_01" to "ESP Gren 01" or to ES_Saville_01". Part of what is going on behind the scenes is that the above are getting renamed "ES Barcelona 01", "ES Grenada 01" and "ES Saville 01". We are also attempting to rename some of the numbered images to actually include more searchable words that are in the photograph. And then there are moments when artists files (Spain had two Banksy photos and one from CSP) have to be moved to the artist archives, including when new artist archives are created.

Fun and improved for your maximum good time...

barely beyond belief!

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