Social Activism Through Stencil Art
August 30th, 2005 by atari
We love fun things in foreign languages over here at Reasoner. Not surprisingly, this stencil encourages you to “be vegetarian.” It is the most prominent stencil I have seen so far in Rio de Janeiro. Stencil art often has a , which makes it somewhat unique in the street art genre. (I’m not denying that graffiti can also take a social or political standpoint, but I do think that it is often more subtle.)
So who wants to start an stencil crew?
August 30th, 2005 at 5:44 pm
one of my neighbors left all these cans of neon spray paint out on the sidewalk, so i’m in.
August 31st, 2005 at 12:49 am
way, WAY ahead of you, dude… folks in cambridge, keep a look out for my sister, in bright pink, and my friend lewis, in blue-green. not particularly political, but politics has never really sparked my creative impulses.
August 31st, 2005 at 9:52 am
I like this London stencil guy.
August 31st, 2005 at 11:32 am
oh yeah banksy’s good shit. i think he’s the one that did this:
and ellie.. your friends may be ahead of us, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t have an rpl crew. i’m not saying it has to be political. some of my favorite stencil art is very streamlined imagery… but i do appreciate the political undertones..
August 31st, 2005 at 1:45 pm
Ellie, you are on a sticker I see posterd all around the greated boston area. It has two of you and a pink splotch in the middle. Look out for it.
August 31st, 2005 at 3:33 pm
bunnywonder.. will you join my crew?
August 31st, 2005 at 10:29 pm
wait…..but why i should i be vegetarian?
oh right. because stencils are cool. and the cool kid who made this cool stencil is probably vegetarian. gag me – self-righteous hipsters are totally the worst kind.
August 31st, 2005 at 10:56 pm
i’d love to look out for stickers of me in the greater boston area, but that would necessitate my being in the greater boston area. but i’m certainly intrigued. and atari… am i not rpl? i meant to say that rpl is already represented (albeit slightly) in the field of stencilling, by me, but i guess i’m not on the mailing list anymore…..... snif
how d’you put images on this thing? you guys might like lewis.
August 31st, 2005 at 11:42 pm
oops ellie you should join rpl stencil too! or be the founding member or whatever. and let’s not forget your stickers.. but i thought you said it was your friend and bro that were doing it. so you are too?
also—re: self-righteous hipsters, i’m not sure who is doing the stencilling in rio, but i highly doubt they have anything to do with the breed that exists in the states. and no one is forcing you to be vegetarian.
let me know if you want to put up imgs. we can do it with the admin acct.
September 1st, 2005 at 11:34 am
don’t worry, i didn’t think they were forcing me to be vegetarian (that would have made me a bit angrier). it’s just that the graffiti says “be vegetarian,” in the imperative tense, and i don’t actually think that that’s a reasonable thing to stencil. it taps the self-righteous strain of political propaganda (which is potentially productive, but i don’t think quite works here) as well as that of militant vegetarians. and is sort of spurious, self-righteous, and masturbatory for something that’s supposed to be public art. i like stencils that aren’t bossy, or that are bossy in interesting ways. using words is tricky, to say the least. i would have prefered pictures of vegetables (as was done in boston a bit this winter).
September 1st, 2005 at 12:12 pm
i do agree in the sense that i generally prefer messages that are more subtle such as in the disney war post that i linked to. i’d definitely rather use more muted messages in any type of RPL stencilling.
however, brazilians are generally in-your-face kind of people (believe me, i have experienced this on more than one occasion) and who are we to tell the brazilian stencil artists to be more subtle? plus, i have no idea who they are and if there is another motivation behind this stencil campaign.
a good example is gay shame in san francisco. they do a whole lot of stencilling around the mission and castro. at first i wasn’t sure if it was an anti- gay initiative because of its seemingly condescending nature but in fact they seek to expose what they consider the corporate exploitation of the gay community. (example of what they consider exploitative—many companies who for years denied benefits and discriminated against gays are now “jumping on the bandwagon” and have rainbow banners in the castro because they realize they can profit from the gay community..)
September 1st, 2005 at 6:06 pm
I am totally down for SprayStencil crew. We can even use the shopping bag method used in “Bomb the System” (a sadly not as good as I hoped movie). I’m pro graphics/ext mix heavy on the graphics banksy style. Need to find good way to make stencils. Photoshop, transparency paper, printer and an exacto knife? But how to make big ones?
Also WalterBunny should join. Running from the cops could be our new form of non-exercise/exercise. Ah the endorphins of fear/excitement….
September 1st, 2005 at 6:11 pm
rpl spraystencil! YEAH!
there are actually some great tutorials on
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:23 am
mine are pretty mini, i’ve just been doing them on cereal boxes with printer paper, glue stick and exacto knife (they are of my sister and my friend lewis, not by them). the only problems are when they get all thick with paint and bent so they don’t lay flat; you only get so many uses before they stop being sharp. also hard not to blur when you are afraid of apprehension, incarceration, or good old 3 a.m. mugging. lewis is the one i’m trying to spread as much as possible; i’d love to show it to you guys if i can. who should i send it to?
September 2nd, 2005 at 9:58 am
nice! did you check the tutorials on stencil revolution? they might help..
you can send it to atariteenage at gmail and i can forward it along
September 3rd, 2005 at 1:06 pm
if you want to make stencils, you’d, yes, use photoshop (this is the fancier way – up the contrast, convert to gray scale, use the magic wand; you can also print in black and white and use a photocopy machine with the contrast turned all the way up). tape or glue the paper to something harder – foam core’s ideal, cardboard or oak tag (cereal boxes) work fine too. cut out the dark parts with an exacto. figuring out what to cut is, i think, what makes the difference between good and bad stencils. when you spray, be careful to hold the paper/board down tightly. if you want to make a two level (two colors plus background) stencil, which tend to look better but take a little longer, make two stencils, one with the contrast / magic wand level all the way up (you’ll use the lighter paint color on this one) and one with the contrast / magic wand somewhere in the middle (use the darker color on this one).
and it’s worth thinking about for what and with whom you’re willing to get arrested before you go out spraypainting, of course. also whose property you’re willing to upset.
one other version, particularly if you’ve got a delicate or multi-stencil design, is to take down minor street signs (this is obviously legally risky), paint them at home, and put them back up. that’s how these were made (by some prodigal 14 year old boys):
September 3rd, 2005 at 8:51 pm
stencil revolution also discusses a “legal” chalk type of sidewalk stencilling using an adhesive which seems to be a less risky option. in sf pretty much all of the stencilling i saw was on sidewalks…
December 5th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
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