Category: the faith of graffiti

Featured collector: Chuck Keppler

A U.S. collector named Chuck Keppler contacted me recently in conjunction with the exhibition of screen prints and stickers by Shepard Fairey at St. Lawrence University, Inspiring | Controversial | OBEY! Chuck has compiled an amazing collection of Obey stickers and an Obey sticker database that numbers over 1,400 and is grouped by themes: OGs, icons, star icons, Obey/Giant, propaganda, circles, banners, commercial identity, etc. I asked for an interview, and here are Chuck’s responses. Can you describe how and when you got started with the Shepard Fairey Obey sticker database project? What piqued your interest? Do you collect the…

Featured artists/activists: Slavers of New York

The Slavers of New York sticker campaign and guerrilla education initiative is the work of three independent activists, Ada Reso, Maria Robles, and Elsa Eli Waithe, who in 2020 began posting stickers that looked like street signs altered to name New York City’s early slaveowners. Using census and manumission records, newspaper listings, and in-depth historical research, they have identified over 200 government officials, businessmen, and wealthy farmers who owned or traded enslaved people from the 1600s through the early 1800s. For the group’s first sticker, Elsa notes, “Nostrand Ave. is seven miles long in Brooklyn. And … what’s really egregious…

Sticker making workshop with St. Lawrence University First-Year Program class

Two SLU professors, Steve Barnard (Sociology) and John Collins (Global Studies), brought their First-Year Program class to the gallery in November 2019 for a hands-on sticker making workshop. The name of the course is “Question Everything: The Art of Information Activism,” and the syllabus states: This course is for students who want to be activists for change and activists for truth. Activists are people who seek to transform dominant social structures through collective action that often stretches beyond the official political system. Activists start by asking deep questions about the world. Why is there so much injustice? How can we…

“Paper Bullets – the expanded version” at Neurotitan Gallery in Berlin, Germany

In the summer of 2019, I was given the opportunity to present an expanded version of my Paper Bullets exhibition at the acclaimed Neurotitan Gallery in Berlin, Germany. Oliver Baudach, the director of Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum, was the driving force that made the project possible. It was an enormous undertaking, in that for the first time I drew from my entire collection of thousands of new, unused, historical and contemporary political stickers from around the world. Neurotitan is a non-commercial, alternative art gallery that features urban art. Housed in the Haus Schwarzenberg in Mitte, the gallery dates back to…

Summer 2015 Sticker Quadrathlon!

It’s been an incredibly busy summer creating traveling exhibitions and building a new digital archive, a new Web site, and a new Street Art course. Here is the syllabus for the course. St. Lawrence University Street Art Graphics! AAH 3014 SYLLABUS – Fall 2015 Course Overview In this 200-level studio course, students will work individually and in groups to create street art in the form of wheatpastes, stickers, stencils, silkscreens, and a final project that will be placed in a public venue in Potsdam or Canton. A social media component is also included to meet other street artists, see their…

Featured artist: esm-artificial stickers

A large envelope arrived recently at work filled with bright, multi-colored stickers by the Vancouver-based street artist and graphic designer Kenn Sakurai, also known as esm-artificial. His are hand-silkscreened, hand-separated, machine- and hand-cut stickers of words and phrases, such as “I love that you love,” “new wave,” “I LOVE YOU MORE ESM,” “CARE BULLY,” “LITTLE HATERS,” “SALAD BAR,” “FREE EGGS,” “FLIRT MONSTER,” and “NEW ROMANTIC.” Sizes of the ones he sent to me range from about an inch to seven inches. Some stickers reference music, pop culture, films, and film stars like Planet of the Apes, Hello Kitty, and Audrey…

More from Easy Tiger, #1 Asia Stickers Museum

Meiffi Oscar from Easy Tiger, #1 Asia Stickers Museum in Indonesia sent me a little more information about his background and interest in stickers and sticker culture (see also previous post on Indonesian political stickers from Easy Tiger, Asia #1 Stickers Museum). He writes: “I [went on] a motorcycle tour from Java to Sumatra from December 2010 to February 2011. It was remarkable achievement for me cause I used my classic Japanese bike (Honda CB 100cc, 1976). Along the way I saw nature, culture, and got a lot of stickers. Instead of sticking them on my helmet, I just kept…

Indonesian political stickers from Easy Tiger, Asia #1 Stickers Museum

Oli at Hatch Kingdom told me that someone named Meiffi Oscar has opened a new sticker museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, called Easy Tiger, Asia #1 Stickers Museum. I got in touch with Meiffi through Facebook, and we have traded some stickers and zines. When asked about Easy Tiger, Meiffi wrote: “Well, actually the place is my dorm so it’s pretty small for a ‘museum.’ But I dare to claim it though. I got involved in this project when I had inspiration from visiting a unique museum in Amsterdam called Electric Ladyland Museum. After that I’m so eager to play a…

Paper leaflets today

In an article North Korea Warns South Over Leaflets, the NY Times reported last week, “North Korea opened fire on Friday after anti-Pyongyang activists in the South sent large balloons sailing across the border with leaflets criticizing the North’s government…. In a commentary published on Saturday [October 11, 2014], the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said that the leaflets were ‘an intolerable political provocation’ and ‘psychological warfare,’ and that Seoul and Washington were behind them, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.” Check out earlier posts about my Paper Bullets sticker exhibition in Berlin and to see an…

“Paper Bullets: 100 Years of Political Stickers from Around the World” exhibition opens 13 Sept 2014

HATCH KINGDOM STICKER MUSEUM: PRESS RELEASE Paper Bullets: 100 Years of Political Stickers from around the World 13 September – 24 October 2014 Opening 13 September 2014 at 7:00 p.m. Publicly placed stickers with printed images and/or text have been used for decades as a form of political protest or to advocate political agendas. In the United States as early as the mid-1910s, for example, labor unions created the first “stickerettes,” or “silent agitators,” to oppose poor working conditions, intimidate bosses, and condemn capitalism. Later, during World War II, Allied and Axis countries dropped gummed “paper bullets” or “confetti soldiers”…