Since 2002 (updated often), your old-school website for all things stencils. Photo, video, links, and exhibit info submissions always welcome. Enjoy and stay curious.

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Robert Fisk Notes 2003 Stencil in Iraq

This is an excerpt from journalist Robert Fisk's book "The Great War For Civilasation," a well-researched, graphically-described history of the Middle East from WWI to the mid-2000s:

I remember an American search operation in Baghdad just after Saddam's capture [13 Dec., 2003], all door-kicking and screaming and fuck-this and fuck-that and, just a few metres away, finding a message newly spray-painted on a wall. Not by hand but with a stencil, in poor English perhaps, but there were dozens of identical messages stencilled onto the walls for the occupiers. "American Soldiers," it said. "Run away to you home before you will be a body in [a] black bag, then be dropped in a river or valley."  - p. 1006

[u] Where are the Stencil Archives?

Well.... turns out that the fix is a bit more work than expected.

If you have skills with Drupal CMS and Gallery, this site is in need for an update. My web admin thinks that this will hopefully fix things.

Please contact submit [at] stencilarchive [dot] org if you think you can help.

Hong Kong Graffiti Challenges Chinese Artist's Arrest

Hong Kong Graffiti Challenges Chinese Artist's Arrest

by Louisa Lim

May 4, 2011 (from NPR)

Hong Kong police are investigating criminal damage charges against artist Tangerine for graffiti of detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, which could carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail.
Tangerine

Hong Kong police are investigating criminal damage charges against artist Tangerine for graffiti of detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, which could carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail.

Given his real-life circumstances — summarily disappeared at the hands of the Chinese authorities with no charges yet laid — the furrowed forehead and hooded, tired eyes of the image now seem a representation of suffering. Underneath his face is one simple question, "Who's afraid of Ai Weiwei?"

This graffiti, appearing all over Hong Kong, has become a political statement, more than a month after the world-famous artist was detained by the authorities at Beijing airport. The campaign could yet lead to a jail term for the young graffiti artist responsible. And that fact has led to fears about the erosion of Hong Kong's distinct freedoms, which are a legacy of its colonial past under the British.

8 May :: Jeremy Novy "Queering it Up" (SF, CA)

Sweet Inspiration Bakery
2239 market street
San Francisco, California
4pm to 7pm

As one tries to create change one finds themselves in a wrestling match of power. Change is perceived as something unknown and the unknown scares people that are used to things just being the way they are. Yet there are a million different ways to accomplish most anything, were in the end we all end up in the same place.
In this exhibit local stencil artist Jeremy Novy juxtaposes famous quotes about power and change with images of wrestlers.

Morgan Spurlock Sells Out

When stencils that advertise corporate, and sometimes small business, products get posted in this site, Stencil Archive will usually write "advert" into the title of the jpg file. When Stencil Archive started back in 2002, there were few websites that had non-commercial stencils compiled and shared. The many hits that appeared in Google were for industrial-made, crafting stencils. The kinds you buy in art stores.

There have been many guerilla marketing stencil campaigns over the years. IBM, the TV series "4400" and several other corporate blasts paid artists to make the images, got them cut by machines, and then usually paid crews to paint them. Some of these corporations paid fines to have the ads removed off of the sidewalks. I think the best campaign was by Adult Swin. They had people put up LED-lit graffiti to promote "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (full disclosure: Stencil Archive thinks ATHF is hilarious), prompting concerned citizens to call authorities and decry terrorism. Some of these devices appeared in San Francisco, and they were gone within hours of going up - most likely stolen by fans willing to climb up poles to take them down. 

Morgoan Spurlock, a sly critic of mainstream culture, has a new film out titled "[corporation name] Presents the Greatest Movie Ever Sold." Spurlock funded the whole documentary project by whoring himself out to anyone willing to have product placement in the film. It's a crafty film, with funny moments as well as telling moments about our culture's acceptance for advertising, marketing, and product placement. 

Spurlock needed a guerilla marketing campaign, so he got a famous LA marketing designer to give him ideas, got Ron English to make a street poster to paste up, and got JRF to make a stencil for the movie. In the movie you see the stencil getting hand-cut and then painted, most likely on LA streets. I haven't seen the stencil up in San Francisco, but did find the PDF to download and cut DIY style. Making the stencil available is similar to activists sharing stencils, Shepard Fairey's giving away the Obey stencil image, etc. 

The movie is worth watching. Painting the stencils is up to the individual! With this doc's slick marketing campaign, you'd think that I could give you a link to easily download the images. Turns out the film's flashy website won't easily share the link, so you'll have to go to the home page at look for "Download the Stencils" at the bottom (watch out for that pesky trailer pop up).

Video: The (de)Appropriation Project Archive (SF, CA)


For well over 10 years now, I have been documenting stencils on Bruce Tomb's wall on Valencia Street (If you search the Archives for "DAP" they will appear). I have also put art up there and enjoyed all the other art that I do not document. Tomb may not confess to actually owning this wall, because over the years it has become a wall of Free Speech for many artists, neighbors, and organizations. Some call it the Democracy Wall, but Tomb named it the (de)Appropriation Wall, especially since he resides in a former SF Police Department building. The building had a literally tortured past (Chicanos and Latinos were treated poorly by the mostly Irish police in the last century), and a bomb was placed at its back door during the violent era of radical factions in the Bay Area. Tomb decided to use the facade of this building as a force of freedom, more specifically of speech.

Tomb had a brief tussle with the City authorities over his free access to whomever wants to get up on this wall. When the City realized that it could potentially be a Constitutional matter, they backed down. The DAP wall shows up in my book "Stencil Nation" about half a dozen times. He has written about it in the book "Mission Muralismo," where it was featured. Before the book came out, some of the contributors had a show at ATA. I showed a slide presentation of Mission District stencils. Tomb showed the following video of the photographs he has taken over the years. I believe he stands in the same exact place about once a week and snaps a photo of the wall. Being a historian and documentor, I asked him to post this video for others to enjoy and analyze. For a reference of time, notice how the tree grows in front of the wall!

And for a better explanation of Tomb's concepts and ideas around the wall, go to his site: http://www.deappropriationproject.net/

The (de)Appropriation Project Archive will be participating in the Theoretical Archaeology Group Meeting held at the University of California Berkeley from May 6-8, 2011. Resident archaeologist on the project, Phoebe France will present a paper for session 15: Graffiti and the Archaeology of the Contemporary. This is an exciting chance to present the project in a new context, and to get feedback on the most recent iterations of the web resources and tools. Please join us! http://arf.berkeley.edu/TAG2011/