Stencil Art Show
with Garrett Scales and Mathew Curran

Friday Feb. 1 7-10pm

Hosted by FM Goods and Sounds
603 Glenwood Ave.
Raleigh, NC

Ask Us About Our Free Stabbings
a Blackbooks Solo Exhibition

Feb. 9 to March 1, 2008
Opening Feb. 9 from 7 to 11 PM

Spinello Gallery
2294 NW 2nd Ave.
Miami, FL

deappropriationproject.net, documenting years of street art on one Mission District wall, goes online.

For ten years now, the legal wall on Valencia Street in San Francisco's Mission District has hosted hundreds of pieces of art. Pasted posters represent the vast majority of the wall's art, but also includes anything from stenciled posters, stencils, stickers, and even children's drawings. Artists like Swoon, Shepard Fairey, SAW, members of Just Seeds, and many more have put up stencils on this wall over the years. I have been photographing this wall since I moved to San Francisco, and so has Bruce Tomb, the owner of the former Cop Shop that had the wall as its facade. Tomb has documented the wall at least once a week since around 2001, and now he has begun to put his archives online.

This is what Tomb has to say about what he calls the (de)Appropriation Project, aka the Democracy Wall, the Valencia Wall, the Poster Wall, etc.:

"The wall as a resource for a range of disciplines has become more evident over time. As a dynamic artifact, time has been a key aspect to understanding its value. The range of imagery and subjects seems to be unlimited, triggering considerable dialog with neighbors and colleagues. As new cultural issues arise, the archive expands to incorporate them, becoming a living record of our culture and concerns."

On top of submitting jpg images for the Archives, the new version of Stencil Archive can now accept the following content:

Artists draw attention to Bethlehem

(CNN) -- British graffiti artist Banksy has launched an art exhibition in Bethlehem that he hopes will focus attention on the poverty of the West Bank and draw tourists to the traditional birthplace of Christianity.

Welcome to the newest version of Stencil Archive! Sorry that the photos were down for the last few weeks. In order to update them, the old links had to be broken. This is 4.0 of the Stencil Archive, which humbly began in 2002 as a Photoshop albums site with a redirected URL. Things are mostly finished here, but I think that Stencil Arhcive will forever be in beta mode due to the fact that it is a mostly volunteer effort. Some tweaks may happen in the coming weeks, so I will mention it if they do.