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 Archive didn't have the full run). Spanning ten years from 1977 to 1987, the pdfs that Cushing put up on his wide-ranging Docs Populi website were an instant pull for my never-ending stencil hunt.

While I looked page-to-page on each of the pdfs, I was not disappointed. The stencils that were covered were all political, and some of the artists themselves wrote about their campaigns. As Community Murals magazine progressed in their run, they published these photos between 1983 to 1987. Later in the magazine's run, the editors also gave space to cover the exploding graffiti culture as well as billboard liberation actions.

Keep an eye out for continued deep-cut historical postings from Cushing, and enjoy the stencils photos I pulled from Community Murals magazine here:

Chile (just one from 1985)

San Francisco Bay Area (1983-1987)

GudePounds in Chicago (1983)

Eva Crockroft in NYC (1983)

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 translated into the English, from Pochoir a la Une (1986).

"Miss.Tic uses stencils to make her texts known in the street. After distinguishing herself with a self-portrait and a stencil... where drawing mingles with words, today she prefers that we only remember her poetry, which allows one to suggest images ad infinitum." 

"It's the stencil that gave me the approach to make myself known as an author, as a writer." - Miss.Tic

"Even if the stencils that we see in the street do not always correspond to this emotional urgency that we find with Blek for example, even if there is a world between what I feel and what puffs the mouth of Gainsbourg, it's really good that there were people to hang on to this free act that is stenciling." - Miss.Tic

Here are some excerpts from Overspray: Street Art Magazine, issue 03, the "GRRRL STENCIL NATION" special (2005)

"Miss.Tic is one of France's most prolific street artists.... Her stencils are typically one layered, simple cut, often provocative, images of women usually in black, red and white. They are accompanied by short messages and her signature...."

"People can make some stories from [my stencils], they can say that my work is me, imagine it's my diary but the commentary and interpretations are their own. They don't know more about me as a person, I keep some distance. On the other hand, my paintings are always parts of myself. Even if I was painting an apple it would still be me." - Miss.Tic

"As artists, our role in this world is to pose questions. I don't have the answers but at least I'm questioning. It's about getting people out of their assigned roles, how we live our lives, what we do with it, and why." - Miss.Tic

Someone just beginning to make art "should work hard and [not] listen to what others say. If you listen to others, you'll never do anything (laughs)." - Miss.Tic

Image sources and thanks: @2Frais1976, @laetirature, @ornikkar, @KtrineLeHenan, @gudiule, @StreetArtUtopia

Whenever I see Peat's many fresh social media posts, showing new art, videos, NFTS, merch, talks, call-ins, and family bits, I am once again reminded that he is the irrepressible example of what it takes to be a 2020s artist that can make a living off of their work. Back in 2002, Peat had this spark when we first made contact.

He appeared to be a step ahead of the crowd with memorable stencils, hilarious videos, direct inspiration from late Pop Art and "Low Brow" artists, encouraging and supportive board posts, early adoption using social sites, topped off with massive online hustle and self promotion. Getting to know him, and hang out and make art with him over the years, I usually barely keep up with him when we visit.

Back in the early 2000s, Peat already had a style that stood out, and the fact that he now focuses on the eyez (his spelling) makes sense. Looking through his Stencil Archive submissions, dating back to around 2002, this style - and the eyez - shine through the years. He hooked me with his "Dead Fat Comedians" stencils, but his hilarious Mountain Dew Bill Hilly stencil, and the video of Peat as Bill Hilly himself painting the hillbilly stencil in his hometown of St. Louis, was the moment that I got totally hooked.

I still watch that video when I need a laugh, and still have the bottle with Peat's character on the label (I wore out the t-shirt he gave me).

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 died of an unspecified illness.

'One of the founders of stencil art'

Other French street artists paid tribute to her work. On Twitter, street artist Christian Guemy, alias C215, hailed "one of the founders of stencil art". The walls of the 13th arrondissement of Paris where her images are a common sight "will never be the same again", he wrote.

Another colleague, "Jef Aerosol" said she had fought her final illness with courage, in a tribute posted on Instagram. And France's newly appointed Culture Minister, Rima Abdul Malak, saluted her "iconic, resolutely feminist" work.

Miss.Tic's work often included clever wordplays – almost always lost in translation – and a heroine with flowing black hair who resembled the artist herself. The images became fixtures on walls across the capital.

Thanks to: Unruh Lee, @Emily_Lykos, Brooklyn Street Art, @RadicalGraffiti

Spinning: Linda Ronstadt; Oscar Peterson

b-toy (just one)

c215 (just one)

tona (just one)

France (just one)

Germany

Italy

Florida (just one; pro-Ukraine)

Oregon (just one)

Puerto Rico

Faile (just one)

Praxis

Thanks to: Josiah, Esmeralda, @Emily_Lykos, Amanda, Brooklyn Street Art, @RadicalGraffiti, @EnessaKaye

Spinning: Phish, MSG 2022

>NEW< Misstencil in San Francisco

JPS

The Mission, SF

Upper Haight, SF

Here and there in SF

Argentina

Greece

New York, NY

New Orleans, LA

Banksy buffed on TV

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 of fear’ (Masalmeh quoted in Sterling 2012), sparking the people’s uprising across Syria. Watching these expressions of dissent unfold through our computer screens, we were reminded of a song we grew up singing, referring to the resistance to the colonels’ dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974): ‘the street had its own history/someone wrote it on the wall with paint/it was a single word: freedom/later they said that children wrote it’ (Mitropoulou 1974).

>NEW< Alex Vallauri on Stencil Archive

A few weeks ago, we got an email asking if the Stencil Archive featured stencil work from Brazilian artist Alex Vallauri. We didn't, so an instant online search ensued. In a brief Wikipedia entry, it is noted that Vallauri traveled to Sweden in 1975, saw graffiti, and returned to Brazil to paint walls. He then traveled to New York City in 1982 and landed in to the hot scenes of Manhattan while the city was covered in graffiti, stencils, and pop art. He flew back to Brazil and never stopped painting walls, mostly with stencils, until his untimely death in 1987. The book "Alex Vallauri Graffiti", by Joao Spinelli, was published in Brazil by Bei press in 2011.

As always, Stencil Archive appreciates it when loved ones, fans, and artists themselves reach out to us. Since art in urban streets has a history that runs deep, and precedes the all-seeing internet, this project continues to help connect the people, places, methods, and events that enrich the knowledge and celebrations of this technique and art form.