I found and purchased the most AMAZING book:
Stickers: Stuck-Up Piece of Crap: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art. It's perfect. It chronicles the evolution of sticker street art from the 80s up through present day. The book features pages designed and contributed by various well-known artists, and an amazing introduction by Shepard Fairey describing how he fell into the art of sticker making. The book covers all types of stickers, including music and band logos, skateboards, handmade, sociopolitical, and popular artists. It also comes with featured artists' stickers in the back of the book, which I am obviously very excited about and going to put up everywhere. The book was published in October 2010, so everything is really recent and relevant.
A few other books I flipped through but didn't purchase (although at some point I plan on it) are
Street Artists: The Complete Guide,
Graffiti Kings: New York City Mass Transit Art of the 1970's, and
Subway Art (covers pictured below)
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My earliest experience with stickers was back in 2nd grade, on the playground. Sticker collecting and trading was a very popular activity at recess, and all the girls would carry out their wax-paged sticker books after lunch. Oilies, furry, and shiny stickers were always valued more in trade-deals. A few stores sold stickers and I'd make my mom take me to buy them so I would have something good to trade. Then, back in 7th grade I started a diary. I used an old journal in which I had filled about five pages with drawings from kindergarten and first grade (mostly drawings on dogs and characters from the Magic School Bus). At that time, I also rediscovered my old sticker books which had been sitting in my closet for 5 years untouched. I covered the entire front and back cover of the journal with my old stickers (below).
So now I've started my sticker collecting again, but this time I'm making them instead of buying them.
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| St. Louis, MO, December 2010 |
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| St. Louis, MO, January 2011 |
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| St. Louis, MO, December 2010 |
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| St. Louis, MO, January 2011 |
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| Sharon, MA, January 2011 |
FREE MONEY
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| St. Louis, MO, January 2011 |
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| FREE MONEY Collection. NOTE: These are stickers, not real money |
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| St. Louis, MO, January 2011 |
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| St. Louis, MO, January 2011 |
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| The Delmar Loop, University City, MO, January 2011 |
THE LOOP: ST. LOUIS
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| Ice sculptures on the Loop, January 2011 |
Some Background for those not familiar with St. Louis: The Delmar Loop is street, about a mile or two long, on the border of University City and St. Louis. Always busy, the Loop is lined with vintage clothing stores, boutiques, record stores, burger joints, thai restaurants, sandwich shops, candy stores, bars, hotels, an old movie theater, and concert venues.
But the best part about the Loop...there is graffiti everywhere.
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| Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| GEAZY, Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| Peat Wollaeger and others, Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| Let's Go For A Dive, UCity, January 2011 |
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| UCity, January 2011 |
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| Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| Scripts n Screwz, Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| Delmar Loop, UCity, January 2011 |
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| WashU Campus, December 2010 |
Although not considered a major player in the graffiti scene, St. Louis has some unique and creative street art. I'll be sure to put up more pictures from the city as I spot more graffiti.
