Historical Item

Alex Vallauri (1949-87)

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Vallauri Postal God

>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…

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Hugo Kaagman Stencils for Dutch TV Show in 1987 (Video)

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Hugo Kaagman spray performance for Dutch TV program Brandpunt 1987

Bump and Update for Our First History Post

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Just saw over on Insta that the Stencil Stories exhibit in Heidelberg, Germany went up late last year during the pandemic. Though the exhibit says, via translation, stencil graffiti's true roots have been forgotten, we at Stencil Archive beg to differ! For our 20th year here, we just went through our very resourceful History category (recently updated Feb. 19) and updated some of the older posts (new videos, photos, formatting, etc.).

And we also just updated our first-ever History post, which was a bibliography used for the creation of the book "Stencil Nation". We added two books that were not on the list, and updated Josh MacPhee's "Pound the Pavement" zine series info.

Here are the…

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Wheatpaste Recipes from 1880s and 2004

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1880s wheatpaste recipe

Undenk has a great post with two classic wheatpaste recipes. At least we think there are two, b/c the one from 1880s (photo reposted) is difficult to read.

From Undenk:

Here’s our tried and tested wheatpaste recipe:

Makes two litres of Wheatpaste

8 cups of water, or around 2 litres

1.3 cups of Flour

90 grams of Sugar

Firstly, dump your flour in a bowl, and slowly pour in cold water whilst mixing. The aim is for a cold slurry that is easy to pour.

Boil the 8 cups in a big old saucepan and then slowly pour in the slurry.

Allow to cool.

Decant into Bike drink bottles or similar to squirt onto your poster / brush and prevent spillage.

Tip it out after a week. The shit…

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Graffiti - Jaytalking in 19th Century Paris

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Commune
From Toulouse, a common public message since the 19th cent.

Graffiti: Jaytalking in 19th Century Paris

The files of Paris police from the late nineteenth century reveal the tumultuous politics of the time through the graffiti recorded in them.

By: Matthew Wills
JSTOR Daily

January 24, 2022

American histories of urban graffiti tag Philadelphia in the 1960s as its birthplace, but people have been scrawling on and carving into walls around the world for millennia, long before the advent of spray paint. Scholar Elizabeth Sage digs into the…

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Preserving traditional Komon stencil dyeing technique

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Endo Komon
Digitizing this Komon stencil will preserve the pattern for future cut outs.

Tokyo shop strives to digitize to preserve traditional Komon stencil dyeing technique

January 16, 2022 (Mainichi Japan)

LINK to article.

TOKYO -- A workshop in Tokyo that creates products using a traditional Japanese stencil dyeing technique called "Edo Komon" has launched a crowdfunding campaign to digitize and preserve the extremely fine patterns which are on the brink of extinction.

The dyeing studio Tomita Sen-Kogei Co. (Tomita Dyeing & Crafts Co.), located at the foot of a bridge over the Kanda River -- a…

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Traditional Endo Komon in Fashion in Japan (Video)

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Climate Chaos Causing Deterioration of Ancient Cave Art

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The World’s Oldest Cave Art Is Being Destroyed By Climate Crisis, A New Study Finds

BY JESSE HOLTH
ArtNews (Original Link)
May 14, 2021 6:02pm

Some of the world’s oldest cave art is being lost due to the detrimental effects of climate change, according to a new study on the effects of climate change on Sulawesi’s Pleistocene rock art conducted by Jill Huntley and others from the Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit at Griffith University in Australia. In southern Sulawesi, Indonesia, more than 300 cave sites are at risk of deterioration—this notably includes some of the earliest cave art…

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RIP BÄST: NYC Loses a Street Art Pioneer

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BÄST, NEW YORK ORIGINAL, IN MEMORIAM

May 6, 2021
Jaime Rojo, Brooklyn Street Art (Original Link)
(Photo: Stencil Archive caught this BÄST tag stencil in Brooklyn, Fall of 2003)

His wit is what we’ll miss the most! BÄST (Stencil Archive LINK) took no statement so seriously that he couldn’t satirize it – including ones that came from your mouth. A sweet-faced wiseguy with sartorial style, his illustrations on the street at once celebrated and skewered popular culture, codes of behavior, and our presumed heroics; His…

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The Feral Diagram of Graffiti and Street Art

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Theorist Daniel Feral rewrites art history, using the language of MoMA’s first director.

BY KELSEY CAMPBELL-DOLLAGHAN2 for Fast Company

In the annals of “Fine Art History,” graffiti is usually placed squarely outside of the mainstream dialogue. Usually, it’s relegated to a foggy category sometimes called Urban Art–or worse, Urban Contemporary. “Those are not terms that came from the graffiti or street communities,” says writer and theorist Daniel Feral. “They may be a result of categories created by the auction houses. I usually hear the terms used when discussing sales of art.”

Feral is the creator of the eponymous Feral Diagram, a map that revises the role of…

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