The Dirt Floor
The Dirt Floor is a Street Art website dedicated to surfacing the best
in street art, graffiti, stickers, stenciling and underground culture.
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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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The Art of the Buff in San Francisco
The art of clearing taggers' work in San Francisco
Monday, February 21, 2011
Nobody knows more about graffiti than Joe Padilla. The paint-shop supervisor for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, Padilla oversees graffiti removal for all of the city's 220 parks.
A San Francisco native, Padilla, 50, was baptized at Mission Dolores and grew up at 15th and Noe streets. He lives in Richmond with his wife of 24 years, Silvana, and has three children and three granddaughters.
This shop spends $280,000 a year on graffiti abatement alone. People tag retaining walls, benches, sidewalks, pathways, curbs, signs, light poles, picnic tables, pump houses, irrigation boxes. Trees get tagged. Yes, we faux-finish a lot of trees.
We're damn good at graffiti removal. Mayor Newsom made an executive order about four, five years ago, saying all departments must deal with graffiti within 48 hours of it being reported. I have eight guys on my crew, and we average about 80 percent for removing graffiti within two days.
Banksy Begins Oscars Media Blitz In LA
Someone randomly told me today that Banksy was up again in San Francisco. Huh? In the wind and rain? This explains the confusion....
Maintaining the Balance: Purchase a Print, Another One (Stencil) Goes Up on the Streets
Maintaining The Balance from Dave the Chimp http://www.davethechimp.co.uk/home.php
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Aim:
To balance the output of street pieces and products for sale
To remain authentic while being commercially viable
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Maintaining The Balance - Project 3
Customers are invited to purchase a print which funds an identical street piece.
The artist produces two identical prints. One is sent to the customer, the other is pasted in the street.
The print includes the customers name. The customer becomes both a patron of art for the community and an accomplice in an act of “vandalism”.
The artist and customer both share the “fame” aquired with “getting their name up”, and the risk involved with the act of doing so.
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Print specifications
Maintaining The Balance - Project 3
Two colour print, Acrylic on 190 gsm paper, 594mm x 420mm
Unlimited edition, though as each print is customised with customers name it becomes an edition of 1. Signed by the artist
30 euros + 5 euros shipping Europe, 10 euros worldwide
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email davethechimp@gmail.com for more details
25 Feb:: Jana and Js "Jeux de constructions" show (Paris)
Jana & Js
Solo show "Jeux de constructions"
February, 25 - March, 26
Opening on Friday, February, 25 from 6 pm
Deserted factories, parking lots being demolished, low rise apartment blocks : these elements - among many others - surround and inspire Jana & Js. Their work is nourished by the city they live in, together with its inhabitants and its ever changing architectural landscape. The paintings created by this couple of artists make use of extremely detailed and scrupulously prepared stencils..
Jana & Js raise the question of the individual in large groups of buildings and more widely in the cities, combining portraits and architectural views.
Their street paintings (in France, Austria, Russia, Slovakia, Romania and Spain) also led them to develop an interaction with the environment in which they operate and the public – passerby or spectator – using sets of mirrors as a game in order to create infinities of ways of seeing the city.
Jana & Js are young artists whose work began to take shape only in the mid-2000, and who are today among the most talented of their generation. After having lived and worked together in Paris, they are today between Austria and France.
Jeux de Constructions is the second exhibition in Itinerrance Gallery devoted to them. Combining their love for woodworking, rebuilding their own materials and images composition from their cuts, this exhibition will present for the first time a wide range of their work volume initiated a few months ago.
Solo show "Jeux de constructions"
February, 25 - March, 26
Opening on Friday, February, 25 from 6 pm
Deserted factories, parking lots being demolished, low rise apartment blocks : these elements - among many others - surround and inspire Jana & Js. Their work is nourished by the city they live in, together with its inhabitants and its ever changing architectural landscape. The paintings created by this couple of artists make use of extremely detailed and scrupulously prepared stencils..
Jana & Js raise the question of the individual in large groups of buildings and more widely in the cities, combining portraits and architectural views.
Their street paintings (in France, Austria, Russia, Slovakia, Romania and Spain) also led them to develop an interaction with the environment in which they operate and the public – passerby or spectator – using sets of mirrors as a game in order to create infinities of ways of seeing the city.
Jana & Js are young artists whose work began to take shape only in the mid-2000, and who are today among the most talented of their generation. After having lived and worked together in Paris, they are today between Austria and France.
Jeux de Constructions is the second exhibition in Itinerrance Gallery devoted to them. Combining their love for woodworking, rebuilding their own materials and images composition from their cuts, this exhibition will present for the first time a wide range of their work volume initiated a few months ago.
Spray Paint and the Buff: Bad for Air Quality?
2022 UPDATE: This post gets a fair amount of traffic via Google searches for spray paint and air quality issues. Glad you stopped by! Recently, Stencil Archive has added other posts about spray paint and environmental/health issues: a long read on aerosol pollution from Mongabay, Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for Belton and MTN 94 paints, and an article on aerosols from National Geographic. Read on and get informed. - Stencil Archive
Paint it green
Do graffiti artists express themselves at the expense of our air quality?
by AMY KINGSLEY : AKINGSLEY@LVCITYLIFE.COM
Graffiti artists and taggers already have to worry about local law enforcement catching them with a backpack full of spray paint. Someday, they may also have to dodge environmentalists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Research by a local air quality specialist suggests graffiti -- and the efforts to cover it up -- might damage the air more than some industries that are monitored by the federal government. The turf war between graffiti artists and local officials in Clark County produced an estimated 31 tons of emissions in 2008, according to Algirdas Leskys, a senior air quality specialist with Clark County, who did the research on his own time. Paint produces volatile organic compounds, which are the precursors of the ozone that turns the air yellow and thick. The majority of the fumes came not from the graffiti itself but from the paint used to cover it up, he said.
Research by a local air quality specialist suggests graffiti -- and the efforts to cover it up -- might damage the air more than some industries that are monitored by the federal government. The turf war between graffiti artists and local officials in Clark County produced an estimated 31 tons of emissions in 2008, according to Algirdas Leskys, a senior air quality specialist with Clark County, who did the research on his own time. Paint produces volatile organic compounds, which are the precursors of the ozone that turns the air yellow and thick. The majority of the fumes came not from the graffiti itself but from the paint used to cover it up, he said.
6 Feb. : Quasikunst and Tona Kombo-Exhibition, Hamburg
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Hamburg OZM Bartelsstr.65
Tona and Quasikunst in den kellerräumen des OZM bartelsstr.65 in hamburgvernissage 6.2.2011 20uhr
finissage 11.2.2011 20uhr