Historical Item
Grateful Dead "Steal Your Face" Logo First Stenciled
Photo, from WI in 1970, updated 2019 (thanks, r/gratefuldead)
Was reading an interesting article/interview about LSD pioneer chemist Owsley "the Bear" Stanley and hopped over to his site for further reading. In 1969, Stanley and artist Bob Thomas worked out the Grateful Dead logo to mark the band's equipment (here's his story). At first, it was just the three-colored lightening bolt, and was used as a stencil.
In the account, Stanley describes how it became a stencil:
"At the warehouse I told Bob the idea that I had, and he made a quick sketch. A mutual friend, Ernie Fischbach, who was visiting with Bob…
Save Tire Beach in SF!
From the Stencil Archive inbox:Thought you might know some folks who would be interested to know about this weekend's planned whitewashing of graffiti at tire beach, aka toxic beach or "warm water cove." If people aren't familiar with the area, it's the park at the east end 24th at the bay. The walls adjacent to the park are covered with great graffiti--a testament to the area's long history as as a space for free, unrestricted public art. A few city sponsored groups are soliciting volunteers to "reclaim" the park from "graffiti vandals" who they say have targeted the park. This saturday the 4th, between 9am and noon, they plan to whitewash over the graffiti as part of efforts to make the area cleaner and safer. Safer for development, and for the inevitable mission bay-ing of the dogpatch, I guess.
This is a terrible idea. Tire beach is one of the most beautiful spots in the city, as-is, and one of sf's last bastions of unsterilized, unrestricted space. If you agree… Read more
Resistencia Visual: Oaxaca Stencil (Video)
aki esta el link pa el video de fotos de stencil de oaxaca. saludos
Splasher Manifesto PDF Download
From the NY Times article:Two days after Mr. Cooper’s arrest, a group of people showed up at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Chelsea, where a reception was being held for Mr. Fairey. Without identifying themselves, they distributed copies of a 16-page tabloid with the title “If we did it this is how it would’ve happened,” with a cover photograph of an image created by Mr. Fairey defaced with paint.
Inside were reproductions of the communiqués that were pasted next to the sites of many paint attacks and appeared to draw inspiration from the writings by the Situationists, a group of political and artistic agitators formed in the 1950s, and a 1960s anarchist group called Black Mask.
In often bombastic language those fliers condemned the commercialization of art and included statements saying that the wheat paste used to affix the fliers had been mixed with shards of glass. An essay in the paper given out at the gallery scoffed at those who had difficulty… Read more
Lost Graffiti Dissertation FOUND!
After being lost in an old mail folder, I finally found Steve Paynter's great dissertation "Subversion of Public Space." He gave me the paper in 2005, so I'm glad that I can put it up for you all to enjoy. Go here to download the PDF file, read, and discuss.Apologies to Steve for waiting so long to post this.
Taggers spread gang image
Here's an article about gang graff from my temporary home town:
Des Moines, other cities wrestle with rise in graffiti reports, costly cleanups
By TOM ALEX
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
October 24, 2006
The writing is on the wall: Des Moines police expect 2006 to be a record year for graffiti.
Officers have fielded 942 graffiti reports this year. That compares with 740 last year, 441 reports in 2004 and 357 in 2003.
"We'll top 1,000 for the first time" this year, Detective Michael Stueckrath said.
Even more disturbing than the damage and the cost of cleaning it up, police say, is the source of the malicious art: street gangs, who are using the spray paint to send messages.
Gang-related graffiti was reported in at least nine locations on a single day last week.
"It's really disturbing," said City…
SRJC student arrested as prolific tagger
By BOB NORBERGAND JEREMY HAY
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT (Santa Rosa, CA)
A Santa Rosa man suspected of being the prolific tagger "El Barto," whose widespread graffiti has caused about $100,000 in damage, was arrested Friday, police said.
xxxx, an 18-year-old Santa Rosa Junior College student, is suspected of several hundred graffiti incidents throughout Sonoma County and in other parts of the Bay Area during the past year, making him one of the region's most active vandals, Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Lisa Banayat said.
His tag has been prominent on freeway railings and overpasses, homes, commercial buildings, fences and signs.
"I even saw him once on Lombard in San Francisco," Banayat said.
After a monthlong investigation, xxxx was arrested at a first-floor, one-bedroom Ridgway Avenue apartment where he lived with his father, xxxx, across the street from the Santa Rosa City Schools District administrative offices.
Youth soccer… Read more
Writing's on the wall for graffiti guerrilla
Writing's on the wall for graffiti guerrilla Notorious S.F. tagger hit with $20,000 fine
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Carlos Romero left his spray-painted graffiti marks around San Francisco for years, tagging everything from fences and walls to street signs and trash cans with such monikers as CREAM and QUESO (which in Spanish means cheese).
And it wasn't just dairy products he had an affinity for. When police linked Romero to one tag name, city officials said, he would simply switch to another, and in addition to CREAM and QUESO he left a trail…
Read moreJames Prigoff and Others at Commonwealth Club 8/16
Urban Scrawl or Artistic Freedom?
PEX, Street Artist
BEN MORGAN, Director, Quality of Life (Graffiti Film)
JOHN DOFFING, Founder, START SOMA + START MOBILE Art Galleries
MACHAELA M. HOCTOR, Deputy City Attorney, San Francisco City Attorney's Office
MOHAMMED NURU, Chair, San Francisco's Graffiti Advisory Board
JONATHON KEATS, Art and Culture Critic; Visual Arts Critic, San Francisco Magazine - Moderator
From its contemporary origins in the late 1960s, graffiti has spread globally, from the city and boroughs of New York to walls around the world. Some see the proliferation of graffiti as a veritable modern plague, an urban blight that clearly diminishes quality of life. Others would argue that today's graffiti is a historically significant art form, providing a unique means of creative expression to the disenfranchised and marginalized. Are the words of the prophets truly written on subway walls and tenement halls, or is graffiti nothing more…
Read moreScott Williams Receives SFAI's 2005 Adaline Kent Award
Scott Williams's Main Stencil Archive
Here is Scott's San Francisco Arts Institute's Adaline Kent Award …