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.

Other ways to support this site:

Visit the Stencil Archive Support page to purchase a copy of Stencil Nation or take a tour.
Find the Stencil Archives' best original photos on Instagram and flickr.

New Stencil Archive Uploads Pt. 1: 16,000th Upload

whew....

Just went through most of the Archives, changing those pesky "album###" to the actual name of the artist or location. Changed dozens of albums so now you see clean links instead of odd numbered directories.

This is Part 1 of the uploads. San Francisco pics and Europe pics will be uploaded tomorrow. These archives will undergo the above mentioned changes too, making their links more understandable.

Stencil Archive uploaded photo No. 16,000 tonight! Jessica made a cut out for the End:Civ doc, and here it is as the 16,000th pic:

As for the rest of tonight's uploads, here are the fresh new links:

Uploads Part 2 coming later today (it's 2am here...)

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Stencil Archive News

23 May :: Arabic Graffiti Exhibit (Berlin)

Arabic Graffiti Exhibition - Berlin
* el Seed * Zepha * Blouzaat * l'Atlas * Monsieur Cana *

Exhibition:
23.-28. May 2011 / 12-7 pm

After the great success of the recently published book "Arabic Graffiti", the Common Ground Gallery in Berlin shows a fine selection of international artists featured in this publication.

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In the Galleries

28 May :: Urban Imprints (Paris)

Urban imprints
An exhibit, an auction
At the initiative of SOS RACISME, 84 internationally renown Street Art artists united around the very present-day theme “Touche pas a mon pote” [don’t touch my buddy] exhibit they creations from Saturday 28th to Monday 30th May 2001 at the Palais d’Iéna, Paris, France.
Thanks to the generosity of these artists, this free (access) exhibit will conclude by a charity auction to the benefit of the Association SOS RACISME (for 3/4th, 1/4th for the artists).

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In the Galleries

Stencil Archives (Sort of) Back

If you look up in Stencil Archive's navigation bar, you will see that the Archives are up!

http://www.stencilarchive.org/gallery3/index.php/

Phase I of the repair is complete, so when you click over, you will see a different lay out of the Gallery3 Archives site.

There will not be a way to get back "home" here to the main page, so I suggest that you right click and "open link in new tab."

Phase II will include adding the same theme to the new Gallery3 Archives as well as updating this part of the site to Drupal7.

Then we hope to link the two parts in a somewhat seamless way!

Thanks to everyone who has generously donated towards this repair project. Every little bit helps.

PS: New uploads coming soon.... as well as photo no. 16,000

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Stencil Archive News

Coyote Mentions Early 1967 Stencils in San Francisco

[During the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In] "paisley banners and flags stenciled with marijuana leaves fluttered in the balmy winds that seemed to be blessing fifty thousand people assembled before a single stage crowded with celebrities and Haight Independent Proprieters (HIPs)." p. 75

photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/hragvartanian/

"One morning [before the Summer of 1967] San Francisco awoke to discover that walls, freeway columns, and fences had been plastered with five-foot-high posters of two enigmatic Chinese men in pajamas, lounging on a street corner in the relaxed and at home posture of hipsters everywhere. Over their heads was the Chinese ideogram for revolution, and under their feet were the cryptic words "1% Free." The poster was designed by Peter Berg, executed with stencils by artist Mike McKibbon (drawn from a turn-of-the-century photo of tong hit men found in a library book), and a group of us [San Francisco Diggers] had spent a long night pasting them up in every neighborhood in the city." p. 81

- Peter Coyote, "Sleeping Where I Fall" (1998)

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Historical Item

[u] Stencil Archives Still Broken... Fix in Process

[update]

I used an old PayPal button link for the donate button. If you have had trouble connecting to the donate page, the link has been repaired (my current Drupal set up does not allow me to use /form code in postings, so the "email link" as an href will work).

.........

Hey everyone,

After a week of research, discussion, and decision-making, the current break will hopefully be fully repaired by next week.

This repair will cost anywhere between $750 to $1,500 USD (after a generous discounted rate from the folks at Mission Web Works here in San Francisco).

When Stencil Archive was migrated to a new server, the older versions of Drupal and Gallery caused the break. Drupal 7 is fresh out of the box, so there are not many choices to integrate a module that can handle over 16,000 images. And Gallery 3 is not as fresh, but an upgrade from what was supporting the Stencil Archives. Gallery's development for a Drupal module is DOA at this point, so we have had to resort to a tethered system.

What you may see in the coming week is a Gallery 3-only version of Stencil Archive, complete with ALL the photos (and a fresh new upload of over 200 images). Then you will see the reappearance of the Drupal-based "blog" content, with the Archives linked in the navigation area.

Let's hope that the fix is quick and easy!

For now, please consider donating to help me cover the cost of this repair. I make almost no money off of Stencil Archive. If you have enjoyed it over the years, why not consider donating to help get over this technical hurdle.

Any donations from the USA that are over $40 USD will get you a copy of "Stencil Nation," mailed to you along with an original hand-made stencil.

Any donations outside the USA that are over $50 USD will get you the same!

You can also buy a copy of "Stencil Nation" author-direct to help.

Thanks!

Russell

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Stencil Archive News

Robert Fisk Notes 2003 Stencil in Iraq

This is an excerpt from journalist Robert Fisk's book "The Great War For Civilasation," a well-researched, graphically-described history of the Middle East from WWI to the mid-2000s:

I remember an American search operation in Baghdad just after Saddam's capture [13 Dec., 2003], all door-kicking and screaming and fuck-this and fuck-that and, just a few metres away, finding a message newly spray-painted on a wall. Not by hand but with a stencil, in poor English perhaps, but there were dozens of identical messages stencilled onto the walls for the occupiers. "American Soldiers," it said. "Run away to you home before you will be a body in [a] black bag, then be dropped in a river or valley." - p. 1006

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Historical Item

[u] Where are the Stencil Archives?

Well.... turns out that the fix is a bit more work than expected.

If you have skills with Drupal CMS and Gallery, this site is in need for an update. My web admin thinks that this will hopefully fix things.

Please contact submit [at] stencilarchive [dot] org if you think you can help.

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Stencil Archive News

Hong Kong Graffiti Challenges Chinese Artist's Arrest

by Louisa Lim

May 4, 2011 (from NPR)

Tangerine

Hong Kong police are investigating criminal damage charges against artist Tangerine for graffiti of detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, which could carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail.

Given his real-life circumstances — summarily disappeared at the hands of the Chinese authorities with no charges yet laid — the furrowed forehead and hooded, tired eyes of the image now seem a representation of suffering. Underneath his face is one simple question, "Who's afraid of Ai Weiwei?"

This graffiti, appearing all over Hong Kong, has become a political statement, more than a month after the world-famous artist was detained by the authorities at Beijing airport. The campaign could yet lead to a jail term for the young graffiti artist responsible. And that fact has led to fears about the erosion of Hong Kong's distinct freedoms, which are a legacy of its colonial past under the British.

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News Articles

Historical Item

Legal Information

8 May :: Jeremy Novy "Queering it Up" (SF, CA)

Sweet Inspiration Bakery

2239 market street

San Francisco, California

4pm to 7pm

As one tries to create change one finds themselves in a wrestling match of power. Change is perceived as something unknown and the unknown scares people that are used to things just being the way they are. Yet there are a million different ways to accomplish most anything, were in the end we all end up in the same place.
In this exhibit local stencil artist Jeremy Novy juxtaposes famous quotes about power and change with images of wrestlers.

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In the Galleries

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