Welcome to the new/updated site! The Archives and search function may look a bit different, but it is still the same good time. Since 2002, your old-school website for all things stencils. Please consider donating what you can to support the much-needed upgrade. Photo submissions always welcome. Enjoy and stay curious.

Donate any amount.

Other ways to support this site (beyond submitting pics, videos, exhibit info, etc.):

Oaxaca Stencil Nation Report Back

This is from Ita, a photographer who sent great photos for the Stencil Nation book project:

me ha llegado el libro de Stencil Nation
thanks
muchas gracias por el envio y la publicacion! y felicidades por el libro
i like, les gusta mucho a todos en Oaxaca que hallan salido lo que pintan, sobre la situacion que se vive.
ahora tenemos un proyecto a nivel nacional, con colectivos de todo el pais, esta es la pagina ke estamos haciendo, y ahi vienen los links de los demas colectivos, mirarli, look it!

es RCM Revuelta Cultural Mexicana in Oaxaca, DF; CD Juarez, Chihuahua, Puebla, Edo. Mexico, Merida

http://www.myspace.com/revueltaculturalmexicana

Stencil Archive Image Enhancement

If any of you have wandered over to StencilNation.org, you may have noticed that there's a "guycon" for scrolling down and reading the content on each page. Antonio Gomez, the flash guru who put that site together, even gave him what we call the "yerba mate twitch" when you click on it to scroll.

Well, the guycon came from a project I started in February with room mate and artist Halsey Chiat. Halsey's a great ink artist, doodling some amazing pieces. When I approached him to redesign the Stencil Archive logo, he gave me a final hand-laid-out and inked work that was 1 x 1 feet! We had worked out the guycon idea over the weeks prior, so I was expecting one square with 25 guycons symbolizing stencil community. I got 25 squares of 25 icons instead! His inspiration made me rethink my logo, the masthead, the business card, etc. So I worked out the one guycon idea, floating in front of 25 squares that symbolize the Stencil Archive community (no we aren't all squares, but we are all connected via stencil art). And to show some of his other community clusters, I tried to work them into the new masthead design. And the favicon is a simple version of the guycon floating in front of the squares.

To make the background interesting, I took one of Scott Williams's crazy hand-cut stencils and floated with a blue negative space.

Halsey says he's going to cut out the whole 25 x 25 x 25 block of people and paint it. I look forward to seeing his xacto skills... and know that he has the patience to cut it all out.

Halsey has a show going up June 6 (he'll hopefully stop by the Stencil Nation thang afterwards) called "The State of Lower Haight" You should check it out.

PS: props one last time to Asaf Zulah for the original 2003 Stencil Archive logo. Tee shirts of that logo are still available if you're interested (I'll have them at the book events next weekend).

Stencil Archive Images Updated: 9500+ For You!

Have to post this image: Stencil Nation's homage to John Fekner (the cut-out for this stencil was made by him... hand-cut letters... and dated 1978!) The cut-out will be part of the June 6 Stencil Nation book release and stencil exhibit show. Thanks John.

Many new and updated Archives this round:

Artists

  • Adam5100 had a show go up in Oakland yesterday
  • Romanowski had a show go up a few weeks ago at Upper Playground
  • serf gets a new Archive in the USA Artists Archive
  • gurldogg in Seattle gets a new Archive
  • Dri in Brazil sent a few stencils
  • a1one in Tehran gets an Archive update
  • Scott Wiliams gets two more stencil journals posted in his Archive (1, 2)
  • Eclaricuda keeps cutting the pieces!
  • So does x-sacto
  • and MO-PI in France
  • Pete in Oakland updates his dusty Archive

Places

  • B. Rex was kind enough to give me his photos from Oaxaca and Chiapas to post
  • Chris keeps posting stencil pics on his blog for me to pull and post
  • A small batch from Northern California (with a DPW stencil truck!)

San Francisco

This update brought to you by Harvey Rabbit (thanks for the burrito) and Mark at KCDC (NPR nods to Brad Mehldau and Ali Farka Toure)

Comment Free Stencil Archive

ach! Checked the Gallery/Archive comments today and nave 26 pages of new spam. Those bastards. Guess I didn't get the Permissions right (I'm a newbie with CMS). Have turned off comments until further notice....

If you really want comments back, let me know and I'll put some more time into trying to figure it out. 

Spam-Free Stencil Archive

Well, now.

I have recently gotten calls and emails from artists on Stencil Archive who were perplexed at the huge amount of comment spam that was accumulating on the Archives (Gallery in Drupal-speak). As I discussed things with my web admin, I watched the comment spam go from 900 to 1300 in a matter of days!

I just had the admin wipe all the comments from the Gallery Module (sorry, it had to be done), and I just set up Captcha, a module that makes people enter numbers when they leave comments (spambots cannot do this). Hopefully this will stop the problem (or at least slow it down until the spam-lords find a workaround).

Captcha is also set up for the comments on the other part of Stencil Archive (the post comments). Not much spam action there but now it is protected.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Malcolm X: Stencil Nation Summer has Begun

In honor of Malcolm X's birthday yesterday, I decided to begin the stencil fun at Revolution Cafe earlier than planned. I was fortunate enough to have access to four portraits of 20th Century revolutionaries to stencil in front of Cuba's mural. So the fun has begun. Mark your cals for the June 6 book release part at this location (more info coming soon).

Go here for photos that show the progress of painting out these stencils on 22nd St and Bartlett in the Mission District (more public stencils will appear over the next three weeks).

Janet Attard's Stencil Nation Window Display gets a Nod

(read original post)

Pages Bookstore , Art window, will have a display of my bicycle stencils to celebrate the release of the book Stencil Nation, by Russell Howze.
www.stencilnation.org

Stencil Nation, will also be available for purchase at Pages Books. www.pagesbooks.ca

There will also be a table featuring other stencil and graffiti books, in Pages Bookstore.

The display, is part of Bike Month Toronto. The event takes place June 1 to June 20 2008.
www.toronto.ca/cycling/events

Pages Books and Magazines
256 Queen St. West
Toronto, Canada