Historical Item

Adam5100 Graffiti-Stencil Educator Guide PDF (2007)

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In 2007, Adam Feibelman developed this educator guide pdf for SPARKed (SPARK in education) to use for K-12 visual arts discipline(s). This was early-enough in the street art wave, and the websites and book resources are telling with their lack of content on what was happening in the streets beyond graffiti. A quick search in the pdf…

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What?! PDFs on Stencil Archive!

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Construction Demo Reveals Two 1930s Tags

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1939 SF tag

Nearly century-old mural uncovered in S.F.’s Mission District

By Megan Fan Munce
Dec 06, 2023

Nate Halverson was up on his building’s roof taking in the sunrise last Wednesday when some early morning construction caught his eye. At a parking lot near the intersection of Valencia and Cesar Chavez streets, a worker in an excavator was taking down a vacant building to make way for new construction. Halverson watched as the debris peeled away, revealing…

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Capturing Ancient Graffiti with Photogrammetry, Laser Scanning, and 3D Imaging

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History From Scratch
Cutting-edge tools are rescuing ancient graffiti from obscurity—and preserving them forever

by Amy Crawford for Smithsonian Magazine

BEGINNING WITH ITS construction in the fourth century B.C. and continuing for more than 800 years, the Temple of Isis on the small island of Philae, set where the Nile flowed out of Nubia, was visited by a stream of pilgrims. Coming from all parts of the Egyptian empire, and even as far away as Cyprus and Rome, they passed between 60-foot towers to attend elaborate seasonal ceremonies that celebrated Isis’ miraculous resurrection of her husband, the god Osiris, and the birth of their son, Horus. They beseeched Isis, the queen of the Egyptian pantheon, for aid and thanked her for interceding in their affairs.

Before heading home, many also etched their marks—a carving of their footprints on sacred ground, a picture of the deity, a name, a date or perhaps a short prayer—into the temple’s massive…

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Viking Graffiti in Scotland

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Maeshowe's Runes - Viking Graffiti

Viking Graffiti
Thanks for the pic and historical graffiti tip, @WeirdMedieval

When Maeshowe was first excavated, in 1861, the chamber's original entrance passage was inaccessible.

So, to allow access, the excavators drove a shaft down through the top of the mound. Once inside, however, they found proof that that they were not the first to have broken into the tomb. The walls of the Stone Age chamber were covered in with runic graffiti.

The 30 inscriptions found in Maeshowe, make it one of the largest, and most famous, collections of runes known in Europe.

According to Orkneyinga saga, over 800 years previously, in the darkness of an Orkney winter, a group of…

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An FAQ on Theorem Painting

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1980s Stencils via Community Murals Magazine

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Diablo
Anti-nuke activists had told me that there were protest stencils in the Bay Area during the massive 1980s direct actions. CM magazine published this photo in a 1983 issue. Photo credited to R. Johnson.

Lincoln Cushing is worth following on social media, because he is always releasing historically important media into the world. Just this week Cushing released a full run of Community Murals magazine, a periodical that I had never heard of (Josh MacPhee knew about it, but the Interference…

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Miss.Tic Memorial Monday

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RIP Miss.Tic

The Stencil Archive just uploaded a new batch of Miss.Tic works today. We also just dug into our paper archives to pull some interview excerpts from some now classic and quite obscure publications. Finally, we have cleaned up the Miss.Tic archive for an improved viewing experience. Once again, our deepest sympathies go out to this amazing artist's friends, family, and fans.

Miss.Tic stencil-text translations, from Overspray: Street Art Magazine (2005)

"Poetry is an extreme sport." ::: "Art - people = money, but for what price?" ::: "To create is to resist." ::: "Why meow when we can roar?"

Here are several excerpts, poorly…

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Miss.Tic - Rest In Paint

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miss.tic

Paris street art legend Miss.Tic dies at 66

Radhia Novat began cropping up in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris in the mid-80s and became a pioneer of French street art. Her family said she had died of an unspecified illness.

Le Monde with AFP
Published on May 23, 2022 at 03h15 

Miss.Tic, whose provocative work began cropping up in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris in the mid-80s and made her a pioneer of French street art, died on Sunday at 66, her family told AFP.

Radhia Novat grew up in the narrow streets in the shadow of Sacré-Cœur basilica, the daughter of a Tunisian father and a mother from Normandy in western France, where she began stencilling sly and emancipatory slogans. Her family said she had…

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City Journal Contemplates Inscriptions of Crisis

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City is a journal of provocative, cutting-edge and committed insights into, analysis of, and commentary on the contemporary urban world. We record and analyse ’the city’, cities and their futures, and urbanization from multiple perspectives....

Against the wall
Introduction to the Special Feature: Inscriptions of ‘crisis’: Street art, graffiti, and urban interventions

Anna Carastathis &Myrto Tsilimpounidi
Published online: 08 Jul 2021

[a quick excerpt] In March 2011, large-scale demonstrations erupted in the city of Daraa, prompted by the arrest and detention of children who were accused of writing graffiti against the regime on the walls of their school. The protests in Daraa were said to have broken through the ‘wall…

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