Original (with photos) here: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityexposed/2013/10/06/elusive-graffiti-artist-a…
“She found us. She came in here and asked for permission. She’s taken over,” said Anissa Malady, the center’s librarian, who has watched the artist’s work evolve for the past two years.
“She is definitely a San Francisco eccentric,” Malady said. “I’ve never seen any other street artist in high heels.”
She’s known as Eclair Bandersnatch – the last name is a fictional creature in several Lewis Carroll works, elusive and hard to catch. They’re traits that San Francisco’s Bandersnatch also possesses.
She won’t tell you how old she is, where she’s from or where she lives now. Her stencil-art pieces pop up all over town – up and down Market Street, on Haight and throughout the Mission. Some of the largest examples are on display at the Grace Alley Mural Project outside the Center for Sex and Culture.
The whimsical characters she paints on murals and on street corners are as varied as the fish in the sea. Some works are obviously political, like the series calling for the release of Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, the Army private who slipped millions of classified documents to WikiLeaks. Others represent San Francisco culture, from jazz musicians to leather daddies to provocative vixens. Even her dog has made a few appearances.
Bandersnatch makes her own stencils, using box cutters to carve up sheets of polypropylene she buys at Tap Plastics. They’re always with her, in an artist’s portfolio case that she wheels around the city. She tucks spray-paint cans into an oversize blue handbag that on this day matched both her shoes and her blouse.
“I’m a fashion icon,” Bandersnatch said, laughing. “You have to represent. You can get away with just about anything if you’re well accessorized.”
Graffiti rarely pays. Bandersnatch has been commissioned to do a few murals, but mostly she makes ends meet by taking odd jobs. She’s more concerned with creating her art than worrying when the next paycheck will come in.
“Art is not something you do. It is something you are,” Bandersnatch said. “You don’t have a choice – you’re born an artist. I live to create and inspire. If you’re not inspired, then you’re dead.”
Her work is greatly inspired by the internationally renowned stencil artist Banksy, many of whose spray-painted pieces are permanently preserved on the original walls he graffitied. (If you’re not familiar with him, you might check out “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” a 2010 documentary that Banksy himself directed.)
Bandersnatch knows that much of her work will be painted over or disappear with age, living on only in photos that her fans post in cyberspace. It doesn’t matter to her: The point is to create and have people react in the moment.
“I hope they remember my work,” she said. “If it has a positive remark, that’s great. And if it pisses them off, that’s even better.”