Artists ensure their mark sticks
By Al Matthews
CNN Headline News
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Identity politics and the three-headed hydra by rep1, New York City.
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(CNN) -- I've already touched on the subject of graffiti in this space as well as rare graffiti-painting robots most people probably don't see in action in their towns. So I thought I'd spill some ink on street art to explore this very moment, wherever you happen to be.
Stickernation.net is the posting point for an international adhesive-art underground.
For today's purposes, everything you need is online -- and that's a good thing, too, because this is global. The Stickernation Web site allows sorting by country. Germany and the Netherlands are good places to start, and New York is a home base for stickers as a movement.
The same Web page also sorts by artist, but the cascade of names that results is long enough to be unsettling. Another way to proceed is via the simple screen saver, which, if you're lucky enough to be on broadband pipe, serves up a different design every time the computer falls asleep.
Sometimes what you'll see is just advertising, much as on a bus through central Brooklyn, where sticker campaigns -- often hip-hop ads -- pop out from eye-catching corners along the route.
Stickernation celebrates that. But it also promotes a taste for graphics more generally, such as street logos that also can be described as post art-school street art.
"Square Face" by D*Face is a good example. If the "art school" reference makes all this sound much less appealing, think of it as visually astute stuff you can see for free.
An Amsterdam incarnation of "Square Face" by D*Face, just slightly too cool for art school.
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Sticker art can be a bit like graffiti "tags," which are those scribbles in spray paint on a bus stop: repetitive, stylized, fairly simple. Often those are signatures thrown up in search of street credibility, or something to talk about at a party. There's a lot of that in sticker art.
But many of the sticker-making types interviewed on these pages are self-conscious and capable artists who see their role as an intervention in public -- or "stolen" -- space.
Like street stencils (a pair of cutout pizza boxes, say), stickers "invite themselves into" that mesh of images saturating public space, which usually serves advertising and advertisers.
Thus Stickernation is a testament to a self-conscious scene that often works for a cultural-critical purpose. After all, public sticker-sticking, also known as "bombing," is generally illegal. That weights the participants more toward activist, or else quasi-political work, as in New York's rep1. And it affects where it all gets said: High-quality stuff may not be going up in just every neighborhood.
Which raises an interesting point. Fine work is out there, but you may have to look for it. For some (often less than happily employed), the thrill of the search creates a lifestyle. Hence we have New York-based Wooster collective's artist-authored guides to megalopolises and industrial backwaters (where the sticker action is, hostels, drinking spots, etc.).
But it's simple really. Keep an eye on your neighborhood or explore one you wouldn't ordinarily frequent. You can always go by bus or bicycle. Take a photograph of great work you discover or just show someone else.
And be patient. Stick with it. Because the truth is out there.
