Welcome to the new/updated site! Since 2002, your old-school website for all things stencils. Please consider donating what you can to support the much-needed upgrade. Photo, video, links, and exhibit info submissions always welcome. Enjoy and stay curious.
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...carry on! With our webadmin on an awesome EU concert tour, Stencil Archive had a insecure moment. Thanks to tech help at my web hosting company, all is well. Strangely enough, the site that hosts my tours was down at the same time. It's back up, too.
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Blame it on the alien overlords!
ADAM ELI FEIBELMAN
PERSONAL PROVENANCE
INTERVIEW for JUXTAPOZ BY ALEX NICHOLSON
Portrait photo by Alex Nicholson
Walking into Adam Feibelman’s studio is walking into a mess, a good mess, in that satisfying, artist-at-work kind of way. Surrounded by projects in various states of completion, scattered and stacked on every available surface, I was careful to avoid toppling the very large vase precariously filled to the brim with used X-Acto blades. On one visit, a bicycle wheel sat on a ladder in front of an old projector as Adam demonstrated how the shadows moved through the different patterns he cuts out. A few weeks later, I strolled in to find him making a silicone replica of the leg of the Hungarian camerawoman caught on film, tripping and kicking fleeing Syrian refugees. “The idea for a piece will come up, and for the most part, I’m able to execute it then and there,” he tells me. “I think it’s why I naturally gravitated towards art, but it took some time to figure out which ideas were worth pursuing.” While the stencil work is what Adam is most known for, his practice continually evolves in order to realize each new idea. The last time I stopped by, he took me through all the work for his upcoming exhibition, explaining how each piece inspires or was inspired by another. Personal Provenance, Adam’s first “straight-up conceptual show,” will address various topics related to migration, asking viewers to consider their own family’s journeys as they make their way through the space.
Alex Nicholson: What was your house like growing up? Were your parents creative people?
Adam Feibelman: My dad is a scientist and my mom was a fundraiser for a nonprofit. I would say that it was creative in that my parents are both stimulated by art, had art around and made a point of making sure my sister and I went to museums a lot. I think I caught on pretty early that my imagination and hands were connected. And my dad being a scientist, that’s actually a pretty creative thing.
What kind of science?
Physicist, surface science, which is the study of how molecules move on surfaces of materials. It can be applied to all kinds of things from waterproofing to friction and adhesives. My parents met in an opera group. They're very well-rounded people, I would say. They've got their hands in everything.
Do you recall the first moment, beyond coloring and making things as a kid, where you thought, "Oh, I think want to spend my life doing this."
You know, I don't know if I had that realization until I was way older. Actually, when I was a kid, I said I wanted to be a cartoonist or an architect.
Well, that's pretty close.
Yeah, for sure. But as I progressed through the Albuquerque Public Schools, I didn't really see a future in either one of those, even though I had been kind of making artwork since I was a kid. My parents were really good at making sure I was in art classes. When I was really young, I wanted to draw Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes. There's stuff at my parents' house they still have that I made when I was eight years old that I would own now as contemporary artwork [laughs]. One of them was a foam core replica of breakfast. It was a placemat with a napkin, a fork, a knife and a plate with eggs and bacon and toast on it. The placemat had a pattern, and they still have it. When I see it, I think, “Wow, whatever little kid made this was pretty good!” It wasn't until nearly failing in high school that my mom suggested maybe I should think about going to art school. That ended up being the way to go.
Did you get into graffiti in high school or in art school?
In high school I was much more into graffiti.
That's when the stenciling came in?
I would say, in high school, I was more of the character guy. I could do faces much better than I could do letters. But then again, Albuquerque had kind of a gnarly gang-associated graffiti world and there was a lot of machismo bullshit going around. When I had the opportunity to leave, I decided I would leave all of that behind as well, because I had nothing to prove. I still have nothing to prove... I think. Maybe I do. Maybe I'm proving it right now.
JEREMY NOVY Presents: Queer Street Art, Fighting for Legitimacy
Attention MPLS art lovers! The illustrious and fabulous street artist Jeremy Novy will be gracing our fair city with his talent this month! Jeremy has spent the better part of 2 decades painting San Francisco streets, heavily involved in queer art and stenciling sidewalks and pavement with his iconic koi fish, and work boot prints that depict a kiss between two men.
This 2 night event will coincide with his stencil workshop, please contact Amalgamated for more details on doing stencils with Mr. Novy!
($60 workshop)
26 and 28 APRIL
Wednesday, April 26 at 7 PM
MPLS Make & Take Stencil Workshop with
Jeremy Novy
Friday, April 28 at 7 PM
Jeremy Novy Presents:
Queer Street Art, Fighting for Legitimacy
Location
Amalgamated MPLS
720 CENTRAL AVE NE
MINNEAPOLIS 55413
Hi folks. I have an exhibition with James Wilson at Off the Kerb Gallery. These works are from our Qbank residency in March. The exhibit opens Friday, May 5th , from 6 PM onwards. Come down & enjoy lots of awesome art. - Regan
More stencil photos from around the world. Tunes by XTC. Vibes by Todd G.
<<< stencil by Street Dr. Dude (Hamburg)
>NEW< paperboyo (UK)
fnnch (with a few in-progress shots)
In the Mission (thanks, Josiah, Esme)
In the Western Addition
In the East Bay (thanks, Larry)
Facebook HQ, Menlo Park
Florida (just one, thanks, Daryl)
Swoon at Facebook HQ
One from London (thanks, Whitney)
The TXMX Files Continue
>NEW< sei leilse
>NEW< street dr. dude
>NEW< toiz
Just one in the Hamburg archive, by T.O.Z.
Six Street Artists Threaten McDonald’s with Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
ARTSY EDITORIAL
BY ANNA LOUIE SUSSMAN
APR 19TH, 2017
In another chapter of 2017’s incredible streak of “multinational corporation tries to appeal to the kids; mayhem ensues” episodes, McDonald’s stands accused of copyright infringement and false endorsement for using the work of New York City graffiti artists in a promotional video entitled “McDonald’s Presents the Vibe of Bushwick NY.”
On Wednesday, lawyers representing six street artists sent a letter to the burger chain threatening legal action and seeking “compensation for damages to their work and reputation, as well as profits derived from McDonald’s unauthorized use of their artwork,” according to a statement released by their lawyer Andrew Gerber of Kushnirsky Gerber PLLC.
The burger chain hired six Bushwick-based street artists to paint its new bagel sandwich in public spaces around the Netherlands while being filmed, using that footage for an ad alongside the “Vibe” video. While the four-minute-long video focuses mostly on the hired artists, who are part of the Bushwick Collective group, work by many other street artists appears in the video without permission.
Light artist, and my sometimes show director, Christine Marie sent me a video of Rich McCor's hilarious and creative use of perspective and cut paper art. "It's like a stencil in the sky," she wrote with the shared video. McCor is better known as @paperboyo on Instagram, and his whimsy has made me smile a few times this week.
As artist Adam Feibelman found on a recent trip to walk the rugged trails traversing the border between Tucson and Nogales, the sharp divisions ingrained in national identities and our senses of place are rendered hazily ambiguous as the paths between nations wind off into the distance—no hard line in sight. In a similar sense, the work of Taravat Talepasand capitalizes on the image systems that indoctrinate Iranian identity, state power and gender, and how these notions are portrayed within and augmented through a steady stream of American popular culture. Through their respective exhibitions, Adam Feibelman’s Personal Provenance and Taravat Talepasand’s Born in Iran, Made in America, the artists explore the critical boundaries and borders that separate places and people—questioning, transgressing and meditating on both the systems of separation as well as a seemingly growing need for intensifying said divisions.
More Info: Guerrero Gallery
<<< robi the dog getting weird in Hamburg
Some more from A Inside Heart (UK)
From the TXMX submissions (almost all uploaded):
>NEW< Neal
>NEW< NOOB
>NEW< Putin is Gay
Pirho (just one)
<<< T.I.E. fighters appear on 24th Street in the Mission
>NEW< Douglas Miles (thanks, Terri)
>NEW< Ali Harrison
>NEW< Andrej Wrubleski (in Berlin, thanks, Pod)
East Bay / Oakland (just one)
NYC (just one)
fnnch (just one)
The Mission (thanks, Josiah)
