Stencil Archive News

Alex Vallauri (1949-87)

>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…

Spring-time Stencils Uploads

Thanks to: Josiah, Esmeralda; @Emily_Lykos

Spinning: Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour" (the California episode)

>NEW< zuko75 (NL)

X-Sacto goes psychedelic

One on Valencia St.

Up in Eureka, CA

Over in Berkeley, CA

Just one from Bulgaria

An…

Stencil Archive at 20: Some of the First Street Flicks

In the early 1990s, I spotted a stencil in Clemson, SC while driving to meet up with some friends. I knew what the stencil was a symbol for, because I knew what J.R. "Bob" Dobbs' head looked like. Turns out, the Church of SubGenius had put a stencil of "Bob" in their 1983 book The Book of SubGenius. For some reason, I thought about that Clemson stencil enough to drive back to the town weeks later with my camera so I could take a photograph of it. Like most illegal public art, "Bob" had been buffed.

Then, in 1995, I managed to save enough money before getting laid off in…

Stencil Archive at 20: Fresh Uploads

A rare note on submitting photos: The flicks keep coming! With almost 26,000 photos on Stencil Archive, they mostly come from our own photographs (you'll usually see the Stencil Archive logo watermark) and travels. Many friends have kept looking for stencils and sending me photos, while TXMX sends his annual photo hoard from Hamburg, Italy, and beyond, around January of every year. And, out of their kindness of sharing alike, Jaime Rojo at Brooklyn Street Art keep snapping…

Stencil Archive at 20: Josh MacPhee

Over 20 years ago, before the Stencil Archive project appeared online, a few Bay Area folks kept bringing up another photographer and flicks collector from Chicago. Josh MacPhee had been cutting and painting stencils and making zines with his photos for years, but his main passion was the Celebrate People’s History poster project. He came through San Francisco often, tabling for Justseeds and CPH, and was known to take…

20th Anniversary of Stencil Archive

Has it been 20 years?! Yes, it has. So much has changed, yet some things remain the same. Social media has eclipsed sites like the Stencil Archive, but nowhere else has quite the curated collection of all things stencils. From a clunky part of the HappyFeet project, where pages were made in Photoshop on a Mac clone, to possibly the fourth Drupal version, the fundamental core values of Stencil Archive are still "create, have fun, share, and dare to change the world". 

And, like the 2002 email list notice says... the obsession continues!

April 1, 2012 Post

I just pulled up this old HappyFeet Communique…

New Photos - Mostly North America

Thanks to: Esmeralda, Jaime Rojo/Brooklyn Street Art, @Emily_Lykos, @GraffitiRadical, u/Feeling-Newspaper-25, u/spotinama, u/not_the_zodiac, u/sideshow_bab, u/PureGuava86, @StreetArtUtopia, Josiah

Spinning: Robert Plant & Allison Krauss; Art Blakey (TJM)

The Mission, SF

Over on Valencia St., SF

Eclair in SF

fnnch on a hill

One in…

New Photos - An EU Back and Forth

Thanks to: Jaime Rojo/Brooklyn Street Art, @Emily_Lykos, @GraffitiRadical, u/Feeling-Newspaper-25, u/spotinama, u/not_the_zodiac, u/sideshow_bab, u/PureGuava86, @StreetArtUtopia

Spinning: Robert Plant & Allison Krauss

>NEW< Cyprus

Pro-Ukraine from the Rebel Bear

Pro-Ukraine in the UK

Pro-Ukraine in Prague

Pro-Ukraine in Russia

Two in Berlin

…

More Photo Uploads to the Stencil Archive

Thanks to: Jaime Rojo/Brooklyn Street Art, @Emily_Lykos, @GraffitiRadical, u/Everything4Everyone, u/nzrqrb, @StreetArtUtopia

Spinning: Freddie Hubbard, Dead Can Dance

>NEW< Epyon5 gets real horrorshow

Good advice in Rhode Island

One from Canada

One from Chile

Here and there in San Francisco

SFMTA outlines…

Bump and Update for Our First History Post

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…