From Justseed's "Stencil Four" 'zine (Feb. 2001)

Another classic by Stencil Pirates author Josh MacPhee

INTRODUCTION

Stenciling is the poor persons' printmaking. It is the easiest and cheapest way to print the same image over and over on different surfaces and in different places. To start off, the three most important things for making a stencil are an idea, something to cut with, and something to cut the stencil out of. I can't help with the idea part, but you shouldn't feel like you have to be an artist to do this. One of the great things about stencils is that since each print looks the same and consists of only a positive and negative, it makes almost all designs look really sharp and good.

Classic steps by Stencil Pirates author Josh MacPhee

Due to a language barrier (Hao speaks broken English and I don't speak any French), StencilArchive.org wrote out a list of questions that a friend of Hao's interpreted into French. His friend then interpreted Hao's answers into English. I have made the best possible effort to clean up the English, but some things would be best left to Hao's own words. In an ideal situation, I'd get to ask him to clarify his phrasing, but it didn't go down that way.

SA: How long have you made stencils?

LH: I started to paint with stencils in 1985.

When Peat Wollaeger sent in his first submission to StencilArchive, I was instantly impressed with his mastery of creating stencils. His colors made the images jump off of the page. His cutting style had its own unique characteristics, and his love for the artform was easily apparant. When I mentioned having an online chat, he got really excited about talking stencils. He even mailed me some pix of the separate color stencils for his newest image, Myrna the SK8 dog, for visual reference. Here's what we discussed early on Super Bowl Sunday.

One of the earliest and most regular contributors to StencilArchive's photo cache just happens to be the farthest away. ECCE (Latin for behold and pronounced A-che) lives in Australia, where stencil art is apparantly beginning to really take off. After doing some research online, and figuring out that we're 17 hours apart, we then coordinated a couple of online chats. Here's what we discussed.

NOTE (June 2023): We just updated this 2002 interview with Chris Stain (his Stencil Archive), fixing formatting issues, a few typos, and making minor revisions where needed. Chris was an early supporter of Stencil Archive, submitting art for our early exhibits, being part of the "Stencil Nation" book project, and even sending art to sell while on the DIY book tour. Hope you enjoy reading about Chris just when his amazing career started to take off.

"I cut stencils as a way of documenting life; as a proof of my own existence and how I deal with that existence." – Chris Stain, from “Stencil Graffiti” by Tristan Manco (2002)

SA: How did you get into stencil art?

CS: I just kinda wanted to do something else with the spray paint. I wanted to do screen-printing and I didn’t have any money to buy my own equipment. I had learned how to screen print in high school, and I wanted to do it at home, because I had seen the work of Frank Kozik and I really liked it. I got inspired and thought, aw, I used to screen print in high school and I should do it again. And then realizing how much money I had wasn’t enough to buy equipment, I thought, “well, how can I reproduce the images,” and the best way to do it was to cut stencils.

So I started cutting stencils, just real simple. Actually, I had some old Fisher Price Learning How to Write stencils that were already cut that came with the old Fisher Price desk that had the magnetic letters and the chalk. I don’t know if you remember that.