Jeremy Novy - Queer Street Art

A Movement Defaced: Queer Street Art Fights for Legitimacy
By Jonathan Curiel
published: June 15, 2011
Jonathan Curiel on A Movement Defaced: Queer Street Art Fights for Legitmacy

Cover photo by Michael Cuffe/Warholian.

Inside his art studio in San Francisco's Bayview District, Jeremy Novy surrounds himself with the stencilwork that has burnished his reputation as a street artist of note. Of course, the koi are there. Even people who don't know his name know his aquatic vertebrates — colorful creatures that can be found on sidewalks across San Francisco, most prominently at Market and Laguna streets, where scores of the fish swirl outside the Orbit Room. In Novy's studio, though, the animals are crowded out by representations of people. Men,…

Coyote Mentions Early 1967 Stencils in San Francisco

[During the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In] "paisley banners and flags stenciled with marijuana leaves fluttered in the balmy winds that seemed to be blessing fifty thousand people assembled before a single stage crowded with celebrities and Haight Independent Proprieters (HIPs)." p. 75

photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/hragvartanian/

"One morning [before the Summer of 1967] San Francisco awoke to discover that walls, freeway columns, and fences had been plastered with five-foot-high posters of two enigmatic Chinese men in pajamas, lounging on a street corner in the relaxed and at home posture of hipsters everywhere. Over their heads was the Chinese ideogram for revolution, and under their feet were the cryptic words "1% Free." The poster was designed by Peter Berg, executed with stencils by…

Robert Fisk Notes 2003 Stencil in Iraq

This is an excerpt from journalist Robert Fisk's book "The Great War For Civilasation," a well-researched, graphically-described history of the Middle East from WWI to the mid-2000s:

I remember an American search operation in Baghdad just after Saddam's capture [13 Dec., 2003], all door-kicking and screaming and fuck-this and fuck-that and, just a few metres away, finding a message newly spray-painted on a wall. Not by hand but with a stencil, in poor English perhaps, but there were dozens of identical messages stencilled onto the walls for the occupiers. "American Soldiers," it said. "Run away to you home before you will be a body in [a] black bag, then be dropped in a river or valley."  - p. 1006

Hong Kong Graffiti Challenges Chinese Artist's Arrest

Hong Kong Graffiti Challenges Chinese Artist's Arrest

by Louisa Lim

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Video: The (de)Appropriation Project Archive (SF, CA)

For well over 10 years now, I have been documenting stencils on Bruce Tomb's wall on Valencia Street (If you search the Archives for "DAP" they will appear). I have also put art up there and enjoyed all the other art that I do not document. Tomb may not confess to actually owning this wall, because over the years it has become a wall of Free Speech for many artists, neighbors, and organizations. Some call it the Democracy Wall, but Tomb named it the (de)Appropriation Wall, especially since he resides in a former SF Police Department building. The building had a literally tortured past (Chicanos and Latinos were treated poorly by the mostly Irish police in the last century), and a bomb was placed at its back door during the violent era of radical factions in the Bay Area. Tomb decided to use the facade of this building as a force of freedom, more specifically of speech.

Tomb had a brief tussle with the City authorities over his free access to whomever wants to get up on…

MOCA LA... Art in the Streets

"Art in the Streets" Brings Fire to MOCA

The show is an audacious multi-platform and colorful endeavor; part history lesson and part theme park bringing about 50 years of graffiti and street art history, it's influences and influencers, under one roof. Then there is the stuff outside. Engaging and educational, "Art in the Streets" makes sure visitors have the opportunity to learn how certain tributaries lead to this one river of swirling urban goo, mapping connections between cultural movements, communities and relationships within it. When it does this, the museum system effectively differentiates its value apart from a mere gallery show.

Apr 28 : Wooster Collective presents 41st Parallel

On Wednesday April 28th from 7-10pm, Wooster Collective and Drago will present a hot and heavy round table discussion and Q&A session to explore the current happenings in today’s art movement with nine of the top names from the streets of New York: Chris Stain, Elbow-Toe, Ivory Serra, Logan Hicks, Pax Paloscia, Swoon, WK Interact, as well as Drago Publisher Paulo von Vacano and Wooster Collective’s Marc and Sara Schiller at their super chic venue Meet at the Apartment in SoHo.

Ivory Serra (The Serra Effect), Logan Hicks (Arrivals and Departures), Pax Paloscia (Let the Kids Play), and WK Interact (2.5 New York Street Life) all published books for Drago’s 36 Chamber Series box collection. Chris Stain, Elbow-Toe, Swoon, and WK Interact contributed their work to The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In, a book and exhibition curated by RJ Rushmore and…

The Art of Lotte Reiniger (Video)

Cutout shadow art from the famous animator Lotte Reiniger.

Graffiti's Story

Graffiti’s Story, From Vandalism to Art to Nostalgia

Original NYTims article appears here

Eric Felisbret stood by a chain-link fence, watching three men spraying graffiti on a backyard wall in Upper Manhattan. One man smiled and invited him over.

“You can go around the corner and when you see a sign for a seamstress, go in the alley,” the man said. “Or you can jump the fence, like we did.”

Mr. Felisbret, 46, chose the long way. Not that he is unused to fence-jumping. In the 1970s, that was one of his skills as a budding…

1976 Street Lightnin' Gang Stencil Bust, Illustrated

David Willis just emailed scans of drawings, artifacts, and photos of his 1976, Street Lightnin' Gang, stencil-graffiti bust (the written story is here):


David Wills in Street Lightnin' Gang uniform outside Camden Town Underground station


Wills sprays the traffic light control box in Notting Hill Gate.


Busted by Sergeant Bootsy!


Bootsy says, "OK. Keep your hands on the back of the seat in front of you."

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