Stencil Archive

Part 1 (more coming soon)

Mostly Berlin (thanks Esmeralda, for the keen eye and assistance)

Netherlands (thanks for your submissions, Alicia)

Belgium (thanks again, Alicia)

Photo submission thanks to: Larry Jones
Tunes: Vinyl on Danny G.’s turntable, spinning Zappa, Bowie, and XTC

Eclair

fnnch

Clarion Alley

Haight and Divisadero Streets

Other SF Locales

Protest (just one)

Sunset District (just one)

The Castro (just one)

The Mission

Valencia St.

Western Addition (just one)

Reproduction allows for the widespread sharing of treasures without endangering them.
By LEE LAWRENCE for the WSJ
July 5, 2016 5:18 p.m. ET
7 COMMENTS
Los Angeles

Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road
The Getty
Through Sept. 4

On a sunny afternoon, the glare in the Getty Center’s Arrival Plaza is blinding—and stepping into Cave 285 feels like teleporting to heaven. Here, in one of the main features of “Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road,” winged creatures flutter on the vaulted ceiling while, on the walls, Buddhas preach, myths unfold, mortals repent, donors pay homage. Amid scrolling florals and colored flames, a large Buddha sits, his face a featureless mass of clay. This is a full-size copy, created by hand on the basis of detailed scans and myriad photographs of a grotto carved into cliffs that edge the Gobi desert in northwestern China. It is as faithful to the colors, designs and brushstrokes artists used in A.D. 538-39 as it is to the deterioration and damage that nature and man have since wrought.

The fragility of some sites has made copies an increasingly viable way to share treasures more widely without endangering them. The Getty’s exhibition uses them in tandem with more traditional displays to bring out the richness, complexity and conservation challenges of one of the world’s great art treasures. Its curatorial team includes experts from the Getty’s institutes for research and conservation, the Dunhuang Academy and the New York-based Dunhuang Foundation, and while theirs is not the first U.S. show to tackle the subject, it is the most ambitious.

This video from 2011 was fun to watch again. Animated cut-out street art in Turkey!

A few weeks ago, Stencil Archive got secure via Let's Encrypt! and the mad minds at Mission Web Works. This means that the site is now https, with a padlock beside the website name in your browser. Going secure, we had to begin to update all our links, which don't like embedded files from non-secure http sites.

We focused on videos the past few days and they're all updated and ready for some deep watching. Our video links go all the way back to 2007, when Flash ruled and resolution was a bit lower. And there wasn't much content protected by https.

We've gone all the way back to the first video post and attempted to fix all the links. Where video links were broken, replacement videos were posted, other sources of the video were found, or the whole post was deleted. So poke around and you may find some new stencil goodness.

BLEK Le RAT - 30 YEARS LATER from Spencer Keeton Cunningham on Vimeo.

<<<< Environmentalists, like Honduran activist Berta Caceres, are being murdered around the world. Respect to all those who lose their lives fighting to save the natural world they live in.
Photo submission thanks to: Chris C., Alisa, Amanda, Larry Jones, and Raven
Tunes in background from: WRAS
HTTPS (Stencil Archive is secure! thanks to Mission Web Works and Let's Encrypt)

Argentina (just one)
Chile (just one)
Honduras (just one)

Banksy (just one)
>NEW< Strok (Norway)
>NEW< ENX (NYC)
Peat (RIP Prince)

East Bay, North Cali
Los Angeles (Jess Chen and crew)
San Diego (just one, thanks Jeremy)
Florida (just one)
Kentucky (just one)
New Jersey
NYC (just one)

'Broken windows' policing doesn’t bring down felonies, study says

New York's police department believes that enforcing laws against petty crime helps with felony deterrence, but many departments are shifting away from this model.

By Deepti Hajela, Associated Press JUNE 23, 2016
Read the NY OIG report (PDF)

NEW YORK — A data analysis found no link between enforcement of low-level quality-of-life crimes and the felony crime rate, the office charged with overseeing New York City's police department said Wednesday.

The report took pains to make clear it was not commenting on the New York Police Department's overall "broken windows" policing approach, but critics of the policy said the findings were proof that going after low-level crimes as a way of deterring larger ones doesn't work. The NYPD called the report flawed.

The inspector general for the police, which is part of the city's Department of Investigation and independent of the NYPD, looked at data for offenses like public urination and public drinking from 2010 to 2015, as well as felony arrest data. In that period, the number of summonses and misdemeanor arrests issued for those acts decreased, but there was no increase in felony crime.

Graffiti artist banned from 20% of US after Reddit users' investigation

Casey Nocket banned from all US national parks and sentenced to 200 hours of community service after users on Reddit tracked her down through social media

The Guardian UK
Tuesday 21 June 2016 18.03 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 22 June 2016 17.00 EDT

A graffiti artist has been banned from all national parks and other federally administered land – that’s more than 20% of the US – for vandalism after Reddit users tracked her down on social media.

Casey Nocket was also sentenced to 200 hours of community service and a fine for drawing faces in acrylic paint in at least six national parks: Death Valley, Colorado National Monument, Canyonlands, Zion and Crater Lake.

Under each picture she left her tag “Creepytings”, which was also the name of her Tumblr blog and Instagram account.

After Nocket wrote in an Instagram post that she had used acrylic paint – which is very difficult to clean off – another user questioned her about it and she responded: “I know, I’m a bad person.”

Nocket’s devil-may-care attitude came back to haunt her, however, when outraged Reddit users tracked her down and reported her to the National Parks Service.

Nocket, a New York-based graffiti artist, first came to the attention of Reddit’s climbing and hiking community when a backpacker posted a picture of one of her works that they had found on a trail in Yosemite. Users quickly began talking about the “National Park Vandal”.