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Does this stencil offend you? How about one with an incel message? A burning car? Trump as a clown? Pornographic images? Anti-Christian?

The Stencil Archive has images that may offend, and that's okay. Why? Because free speech is important to us. So important, that we do not always agree with the stencils that people feel compelled to make and paint in public. But we will post them here on the site.

Having the freedom to stencil what one believes seems like a given, but remember that Iranian street artists were held and persecuted for their public protest stencils. Our research for the "Stencil Nation" book pulled up examples of people who risked their lives to oppose Nazi occupation and Soviet oppression. Monty Python's humorous riff on protest graffiti in "Life of Brian" is real. And that movie stands out as offensive to some, but hilarious to others. Freedom of speech and protest can feel tenuous, which is why it should be deeply held as an inalienable right for everyone.

Whenever freedom of speech (and press) issues come up in mainstream media, Rush's less-known song "Witch Hunt" comes to mind: 

Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear, walk hand in hand

We note this on our Submit FAQ, but it is worth repeating that few stencils do not make it on this site. They are most likely too pornographic or directly racist and derogatory. Right-wing icons? Yes. An incel stencil that is directly derogatory towards a certain population? No. Left-wing anti-police messages? Yes. Direct messages inciting copycat Luigi Magione actions? No.

We cannot always appease everyone, and that's fine. Once again, free speech doesn't equal total appeasement. Unlike the current atmosphere here in the U.S., different opinions should be allowed. Let's hope this current chill coming out of Washington, DC thaws. 

As for those who are thin-skinned and have closed minds:

The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill
(Neil Peart, 1980)

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Continuing our tour through the updated Stencil Archives, we visit the artists who begin their names with "J". There are some stencil legends in this round: Josh MacPhee, John Fekner, Joe Iurato, and Joe Boruchow. Then we have Jim, an activist in Knoxville who pulled out all his work during a visit around 2009. Let's not forget Joshua Wingartner and Jonathan Wakuda Fischer. Good stuff for the 10th letter of the English alphabet.

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Making progress on the USA artist archive updates. So much progress, that we are behind in letting you know about it. Today, let us take a stroll through several archives in the G, H, and I realms: Gustav gets humorously political (smaller-sized image files means he was on here years ago), Hanksy (Adam Himebauch) made a splash with his pop culture mash up stencils in the 2010s, and imapest also submitted early images of their cartoon-style work on background patters.

Updates I, J, and K coming sooooooon.....

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Staying busy these past several weeks. Still trying to catch up to all the new images that need to be uploaded. Here's another round for the artists in the Stencil Archive

• >NEW< ian the meow (SF's wellness street artist)
• TopZ still cranking out the political pieces
• Scott Williams (RIP) gets a nod in Barry McGee's "Bay Area Then" exhibit
• Logan Hicks goes still life
• The Rebel Bear paints daggers
• Stefan Winterle with an amazing landscape
• A 2015 piece by Icy and Sot
• SMiLE gets up on socials
• Jeremy Novy makes stickers

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During this round of updates, we got to visit with Crusty Punk, Douglas Miles, Faile, Fidget, and Get Up. Some of these archives are new enough to not need revising, while a few were already updated. Still a great time wandering through all these photos. Dongo submitted back in 2003. Fio sent pics in 2004. Facebook was not mainstream then, and Flickr was just getting started. This site, with Stencil Revolution, were trying to keep the photos flowing back then. Today, we proudly keep this site going as an alternative to data-sucking socials; an ad-free island with zero marketing. Just like it was back in 2003.

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We have had the continued Archive filename upgrade project on the back burner but we have not forgotten about it. Filenames are updated with more information and less underscores. Typos are corrected and sometimes images are moved if misarchived. The final stretch, with USA and European artists as the last sections to revise, is still down the road. During Peat EYEZ's recent visit, he asked us how many artists archives were on the site. We guessed a generic "hundreds" answer. Looking at this last stretch of revisions, there are 213 USA and 306 European artist archives to go through. Maybe several dozens of those are already upgraded, but now the work has begun!

Always nice to look at the older archives while going through this process. Chris Stain, sometimes collaborating with Scout, was an early artist that got on the Stencil Archive. Bob Patterson was one of the first artists on the site and gets a rare archive with only two images (the general rule is three stencils will start an artist archive). Borf made a large splash about 20 years ago, specifically for getting arrested and going to jail as a teenage vandal in the Washington, DC area. We have gotten into the Cs for USA artist archives, and promise to try to have some more updates throughout the fall. 

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Recent travels into the Alps wasn't all trails in high altitudes. Where there were city and village walks, there were stencil discoveries. Enjoy this fresh upload from:

• CH Switzerland (with Philippe and Esmeralda)
• AT Austria (tnx, BeneRegoef)
• IT Italy (with extras from the social streams)

One of San Francisco’s Most Famous Houses Is Hosting a Pop-Up Museum of Street Artist Fnnch’s Honey Bears 

Visitors to the Pink Painted Lady near Alamo Square Park will be able to see 116 editions of fnnch’s honey bear paintings 

Elizabeth Djinis, for Smithsonian Magazine
History Correspondent August 11, 2025 
See the CBS interview with fnnch here.
Go here to get entry to the fnnch Museum, or just show up.

Since 2015, painted honey bears have popped up on San Francisco buildings. In that time, they have become symbols of the city, even if they’re not exactly beloved by all of its inhabitants.

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These murals and their artist, known by the name of fnnch, will now have their own pop-up museum in one of San Francisco’s iconic Painted Ladies, a row of colorful Victorians that line Alamo Square Park. The artist announced on his Instagram last month the opening of the “Fnnch Museum,” what he calls a “retrospective of 10 years of Honey Bear paintings.” The show will include an example of each of the 116 editions of honey bears he has created since his very first in January 2015. Guests can attend the exhibit for free but must register at this link—it will run Wednesday through Sunday, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m., through October. 

“Never before have all the bears been in one space,” fnnch wrote on Instagram, “and I guarantee there are some you have never seen.” 

The pop-up exhibit will also feature a timeline of the various honey bears, with descriptions and photos of the ideas behind many of them. 

“The honey bear is positive, nostalgic and inclusive,” fnnch told CBS News Bay Area’ Loureen Ayyoub in a televised interview. “It’s something positive for people to enjoy….It’s inclusive because it doesn’t require a lot of cultural knowledge—you see it and you can understand it right away. You don’t have to have studied art history to get what it means and to enjoy it.” 

Yet not everyone has agreed with fnnch’s interpretation of his own art. Part of that has to do with the muralist’s own identity, which, while anonymous, “is widely believed to be a straight white man who works in the tech industry,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Zara Irshad.