Stencil: PG-13

Me back in the day

Graffiti grabbed my attention full force in 1996. This was over a decade after the height of 'tagging' in the US. I was at the New School in the West Village that year and saw a clear progression in what was happening on the streets around the city. Graffiti had moved from tagging to bubble-type free-style tags and a highly stylized, multi-colored interlacing letter design was emerging. My flatmate at the Marlton House at 5 West 8th Street, photographer George Saitas, was documenting this emergence as a side project to his work at Parsons. Another friend from Parsons was accepted for his hip-hop-heavy, multicultural portfolio.

Blek le Rat 1987

In Europe these advances were delayed, but another subculture art form was highly developed - stencil graffiti. A major pioneer was Blek le Rat, a Parisian who, I believe, had studied at Cooper Union in NYC. His life size stencils brought a new dimension to street art: he often referenced classical art in his stencils, as well as contemporary artistic and political figures. To cut down on application time - ie time on the street which increased potential for arrest - he began using huge pre-stenciled stickers that could be slapped all over  a city quickly.

England's Banksy, probably the most famous stencil artist, adopted many of Blek's stylistic traits but heightened the politically charged messages in his work. The sheer volume of his stencils and his marketing savvy have brought stencil art into mainstream consciousness.

I started making stencils in the simpler style of Blek and Banksy in college. While it's true that if I had to choose any city to visit for its graffiti, I would choose Sao Paulo for its huge, colorfully hopeful, and nitty gritty tags, I still admire stencil in all its forms.                                                        

One of my stencils:
appropriately irreverent for urinals