Start off with something new and different this year! 1AM is back with our Stencil Class taught by Strider the last Saturday of this month from 12:30pm-3:30pm. Sign up now to reserve your spot and walk away with your personalized spray piece on your own take home T-shirt!
Learn to make your “mark” on the world by studying the art of stencil making.  This class covers the fundamentals of stenciling: each student gets to practice cutting and spraying stencils.  After this class, you’ll be able to design and make your own stencils. In addition to learning to stencil on different materials, you’ll be taking home your very own stenciled T-shirt!

*Ages 14+ welcome or accompanied by a chaperone
*$55/person (class is 1 session)
*Minimum of 4 signups to hold class
*Classes are non-refundable

Upcoming Class Dates:

March 22nd 2014 (12:30pm-3:30pm)
June 28th 2014 (12:30pm-3:30pm)

- See more at: http://1amsf.com/classes/stenciling-class

NEWSLETTER SPECIAL: If you refer a friend and/or family, we will also give you ANY free can of paint or a 1AM iPhone cover case! (Valid only for March & April classes. Must note it in check-out during registration.)

Don't wait on it, classes are also great holiday gifts for friends and families!

A Parodist Who Calls Himself Hanksy
By JOHN LELAND
FEB. 14, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/nyregion/a-parodist-who-calls-himself…
The street artist who calls himself Hanksy, on Orchard Street in Lower Manhattan with his piece “Walter Flite.” Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

This is a story about art in the age of social media — about anonymity and self-promotion, about feral cats and viral cat videos.

In April 2011, a law school dropout in Bushwick, Brooklyn, newly arrived from the Midwest, had an idea that he thought might make a splash. He admired the street artist Banksy; he grew up on the movies of Tom Hanks. Why not mash up the two? Using simple computer software, he downloaded a Banksy painting of a rat holding a paint roller, then added an image of Mr. Hanks’s face. The whole thing took 10 or 15 minutes to create. He printed a cutout and pasted it on a wall at Mulberry and Kenmare Streets in Little Italy, signing it Hanksy. It was a stupid pun, he knew, but he was a sucker for stupid puns. Isn’t everybody?

He photographed the wall for his Instagram and Twitter accounts, and emailed it to the Wooster Collective, a popular street art website. Then he went to sleep.

“And then it just went viral,” Hanksy said the other day, speaking in a Lower East Side coffee shop near the restaurant in which he is a partner. “I remember counting at the time that it had been tweeted to four- or five-million accounts.”

From time to time, I wander around the Stencil Archive photo files and make attempts to delete duplicate photos, rename files with typos, investigate text and artists, as well as other updating. Being an effort of the heart, I sometimes speed up the process of getting images online: older Hamburg and Australia files are a great example of my hasty process. Ususally this happens when I'm on the road and have little time to figure out what I photographed in stencil-rich locations.

Other times, an artist appears and becomes a repeat tagger. Eclair is a great example of this. She stencils so much, over and over, here in San Francisco, I sometimes cannot keep up and/or figure out what I already have.

Sometimes new artists show up and eventually need their own Artist Archive. Case in point: HAR2UNG here in SF (and a bit in East Bay). This artist keeps popping up in SF's Financial District via stickers. The posts are signed, but I had a hard time reading the graffiti-style name. I finally stared at it long enough to assume it is the above name, and thusly today gave HAR2UNG (HARBUNG?) an archive: 

>NEW< http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/San_Francisco/Artists_…

I have a few newer ones to post soon as well, and now there's an archive for him/her. 

So.... if you've bookmarked an image and can't find it, maybe search for it (sorry the PHP Gallery back end only allows searchs for filename text.... something I try to think about when I name the stencil images). And if you are curious about why I post things the way I do (what, no duplicates?), then check out my Submit FAQ:

http://www.stencilarchive.org/submit-your-photos

As always, PLEASE PARTICIPATE in this ongoing project. Without the community, this site would only have what I've found and photographed. Fortunately, this site has friends and artists who have sent images over the years making the Stencil Archive a distinct ark of art. 

Thanks as always......

Submerged Motherlands

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/swoon/

April 11–August 24, 2014
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, 5th Floor

Brooklyn-based artist Swoon celebrates everyday people and explores social and environmental issues with her signature paper portraits and figurative installations. She is best known for her large, intricately-cut prints wheat pasted to industrial buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

For this exhibition, Swoon creates a site-specific installation in our rotunda gallery, transforming it into a fantastic landscape centering on a monumental sculptural tree with a constructed environment at its base, including sculpted boats and rafts, figurative prints and drawings, and cut paper foliage.

Often inspired by contemporary and historical events, Swoon engages with climate change in the installation as a response to the catastrophic Hurricane Sandy that struck the Atlantic Coast in 2012, and Doggerland, a landmass that once connected Great Britain and Europe and that was destroyed by a tsunami 8,000 years ago.

Swoon: Submerged Motherlands is organized by Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum.

A SATURDAY WITH C215
February, 15, from 5 pm to 8 pm

No need anymore to introduce C215 who is well-known by by urban art lovers but also a large audience, as much in France as worldwide. His stencils have flourished in cities all over the world and in Vitry-sur-Seine, the town he is currently living in, a outdoor museum of urban art since 2009.

The Paris based Galerie Openspace is now delighted to welcome C215, a stencil art master, in partnership with Print Them All, around a signing, a print release and an exhibition.

BOOK SIGNING
After a first book published in 2009, Critères Publishing was not able to resist publishing one again 5 years later. Far away from a fashion flow, the success of C215 is well-deserved. So here is the 41st opus délit released in bookstores and at Galerie Openspace.
Christian Guémy aka C215 will be present for signing his book "Un maître du pochoir" published in the Opus Délits collection, along with the author Christian Omodeo (Le Grand Jeu).

PRINT RELEASE
In partnership with the online gallery dedicated to limited editions of ubran contemporary artists Print Them All, Galerie Openspace organizes the exclusive release in France of a lithography recently edited by Idem. 15 copies have been put aside for Paris ! Each copy is unique and hand painted by the artist.

http://www.openspace-paris.fr/

Special Uploads to the Stencil Archive
Straight from TXMX in Hamburg, DE!
need more TXMX? Here's his flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/txmx-2/

TXMX has been a long-time member of Stencil Nation, submitting photos to the Archives since almost the beginning back in 2005. Of course he's picked up the blade and cut his own stencils. Hundreds of them, making it impossible to curate which ones I already have. When I get a message from TXMX that he's about to send me a zip file of his pics, I get excited. Then I roll my sleeves up and cull out the duplicates, rename, and upload.

Here you go for all to enjoi - Russell

uploading musika: Holy Modal Rounders ::: TOOL

>NEW< Bogey Clan
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< jeto
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< lopside foe
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< marshal arts
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< mimi the clown
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< mittenimwald
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< robi the dog
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< run don't walk
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

>NEW< tomahawk
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

In the streets of Hamburg
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/Hamburg

Other German cities
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/Germany

Italy
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/Italy

Alias
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

ASA
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Boxi
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Dr. Ocioso (just one)
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Los Piratos (just one)
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Note
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Pirho
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Quasikunst
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Superfatcat
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

tona
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

txmx himself!
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

whois
http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/Europe/European_Artist…

Blek Le Rat, 'Father of the Street Stencil,' Thinking of L.A.
By Ed Fuentes | on January 16, 2014
Link: http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/writing-on-the-wall/blek-l…
Archive: http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/search?q=blek

Stencil street art is strategic in its placement and monochromatic imagery, allowing graphic arts to become guerilla responses to environmental and social conditions in one swift glance. The urban art form can be found in all major cities, but it thrives in Los Angeles. It didn't have to evolve much from its original source, Blek le rat, the French artist who began stenciling on Parisian walls in the 1970s and 1980s. With the growth of stenciled art in Los Angeles, not to mention around the world, it's important to consider why he's called the "Father of Stencil Graffiti."

Or, at least, to know that he came before Banksy (and a case ccould be made that Banksy directly lifted style and execution of Blek le rat).

Blek Le Rat's first repeated image was rodents roaming walls. "The rat is a rebel, the sole wild animal in the city," he said about his moniker in the L.A. Times in 2008. "They're smart, and they know exactly how to get around. There's another reason I like them: The word 'rat' is an anagram for 'art.'"

Blek le Rat visited New York during its more rebellious time, and returned to France. Not wanting to imitate that city's artists, he chose the stencil as his new form of unauthorized contemporary urban art. Writing on the Wall touched based with the artist to discuss his works and why he has L.A. on his mind.

Writing on the Wall: You say your life is shaped by the way culture was formed by different centuries. How does your work fall into the idea that culture is destiny?

Blek le rat: I wanted to say everyone culture is part of it's destiny.

The Story Of An Artist: Victor Gastelum

Interview with Victor Gastelum.

“Victor is the fifth Beatle, he is the silent one that no one really ever sees.”

—Joey Burns, Calexico

Words: Craig Carry, Artwork: Victor Gastelum

Original Post (with artwork): http://fracturedair.com/2014/01/29/the-story-of-an-artist-victor-gastel…

“Love the run but not the race
All alone in a silent way
World drifts in and the world’s a stranger”

—‘Quattro (World Drifts In)’, Calexico

In an attempt to write the story of the Long Beach California-based artist Victor Gastelum, it is tempting to simultaneously write the story of Tucson Arizona’s beloved sons Calexico. For, across the band’s vast body of sprawling, timeless work — encompassing a string of studio albums, tour records, a plethora of EP’s, soundtrack scores and a multitude of collaborative works — the artwork of Gastelum’s adorn some of the most precious of Calexico’s records since their inception in 1996, following core-duo Joey Burns and John Convertino’s previous spell as rhythm-section to Howe Gelb’s Giant Sand; another one of Tucson’s most revered bands. Victor Gastelum, a native of Southern California, would provide the artwork for one of the band’s earliest releases, “Spark/The Ride”, a single put out in 1996, prior to the band’s full-length debut “Spoke” (released by Quarterstick Records in the following year). The music (both written by Burns) can be perfectly summed up by the description found inside, set in all-lowercase, on a black-and-white postcard-sized insert:

In German with English subtitles.

mittenimwald | Portrait from casper dave on Vimeo.