I decide to wander to the 6pm side of the city. I see R and J at a poorly secured border. I walk over the shabby fencing and walk to an area that looks like a Middle Eastern souk (market). I see dark-skinned soldiers with long clubs and machine guns. I look over a wall and see an art installation that is a flock of huge, edible pink flamingos. I walk by New Orleans style bars and Munich style beer halls. A strange steam punk contraption appears over another wall. I go closer and look for Bishop Joey.

Wandering more alleys, the path narrows and crowds with revelers. I come out to another Burningman entrance! Outside the festival (again), I watch busloads of uniformed American soldiers exit with fanfare and enter the event for free with crowds cheering and applauding.

I wander to the 9pm side of the city. Over there, I see the LA skyline looming over crisscrossing freeway overpasses. This side of Burningman is empty. Several citizens walk by talking about the rumor that nasty winds blew down Larry Harvey’s statue of the man.

I walk back to 6pm and step over the shoddy fencing again. My phone rings. Answering, I have an elderly woman plead with me to stop calling her. I tell he I am not calling her, but we both discover that someone from the ticket scam is using my number.

Jan. 10, 2012 (Marin Co.)

Jan. 9, 2012 (Marin Co.)

Article and Photos by Noah Arroyo (more photos on their page)

Artist Russell Howze isn’t sure how they got to Cell Space, but five more pieces of a historic mural series appeared at the art collective on Monday and will be turned over to its caretakers.

Howze said that when he arrived at Cell Space, at 2050 Bryant St., the pieces were in a back room.

Mission Loc@l wrote about the murals in the summer of 2010, after a few pieces were discovered at Cell Space:

The murals represent an archive of memory that spans two decades, from the time they were created as community projects through the 1990s, when they hung at the Real Alternatives Program, an alternative high school known as RAP.

“It’s our history,” said Ray Balberan, a longtime Mission activist who worked at RAP. He and Roberto Ariel Vargas, a former RAP director, made it clear that Cell Space was not to blame. “We take the responsibility for failing to keep track of them,” Vargas said at a meeting with the collective Monday night….

The murals - 15 or so four-by-eight-foot panels - held special significance because of when they were done, and because many local teenagers helped with them and went to RAP’s alternative high school or used its collection of social services.

Read more here.

Balberan was ecstatic when he heard about the new discovery. “What a trip; good things,” he said.

The murals had been stored at Cell Space and all but forgotten until 2010, when someone involved in RAP saw a piece of one being used as a door to a storage area.

Like the pieces that were recovered then, the new pieces will be displayed at Precita Eyes, 2981 24th St.

It’s not known how the new pieces got to Cell Space. The original Mission Loc@l article (see “An Archive of Memory” under Related) includes a slide show showing all of the originals.

Back in December, I started cutting circles. Dozens and dozens of tiny circles that made up half tone images of money. I cut out the easy one first: Tom Jefferson off of the $2 bill. I took the other two to South Carolina and managed to cut out the buffalo off of the buffalo nickle. My sister and niece helped cut a few dozen of the circles out. The last piece proved to test my bounds of sanity as well as a cramped index finger. I finally cut out the liberty head half dollar a few weeks ago.

All the while Todd Hanson has been holed up in his rotting Noe Valley bungalow madly cutting anything that comes to mind. He’s only been cutting stencils for a year or so but has already become a master at it. He practices on magazine ads but has begun to really just cut what he imagines. So he has developed a truly unique style that I like very much.

Sabrina Enrique from Density on Valencia St. emailed me months ago asking about my having a show at her store. She started selling my book too. I had to include Todd. We met Sabrina at her store and talked about the Mission, art, and stencils. She had a great Michael Kushner show up when we stopped by. After agreeing to set up an exhibit, Todd and I both kept asking Scott Williams, the SF king of cut paper, to be part of the show. He finally relented. So as the show loomed, I had to think up a name that wasn’t a lame stencil cliche.

Todd and I began to throw ideas around. We started to meet up and stencil USPS stickers and would try to think up title ideas in between wearing respirators. Ana came over one day and worked on her Love Aqui hearts. None of the title ideas really worked that day. On the second sticker jam, as I was getting on my bike, I threw out some more title ideas to Todd. “Well, I guess we’ll see if any of them stick.” I paused, and let that last word hang in my brain. “Hmm, how about ’see if it sticks?’” It sort of connected with Todd, who now had a 25th title idea to mull over.

Over the week, I kept mentioning “see if it sticks” to friends. It consistently got chuckles and smiles. I wrote out some punish sentences about sticking stencils and sticky art. Then I realized that Todd and I had made stickers to give away at the show.

So…. “See If It Sticks” will open Feb. 25 at Density. Still working out the time. You’ll probably find the time on FaceBook anyway! I think we might serve peanut butter and lemon squares. Or possibly honey and crackers. Might as well run the idea in the ground. Oh… the initials of the show - SIIS - sound like a the propelling pigment of a spraypaint can.

Nice!

During my 2008/9 Stencil Nation book tour, I set up an event with Matteo Grieder at his art space Zeitvertrieb in Vienna, Austria. Matteo was nervous about the turnout (a common anxiety during my European tour), but I had Pod and Austrian artist Dieter Puntigam backing me up with live VJ and DJing. A nice crowd came for my presentation, bought books, ate and drank, and made a great scene for the event. Matteo was surprised and happy with the results.

A month ago, Matteo approached me with a request for photo submissions to his fun art zine “Artyfucked”. It is mostly a sketch zine, but he also features street art from cities around the world. Issue #8 features my stencil photos (the cream of the crop) from SF. They mostly cover 2011’s greatest hits. He also put them all in an online album.

Support a great project and buy a copy of “Artyfucked” today!

……

A female character from the Walking Dead goes to a back bungalow to relax and clean. Several men stand in the woods that surround the front of the bungalow. One man mumbles something and another man with long hair and glasses grumbles “You’d know better if you read more Anarchist texts!” The other guy leaves. As the long-haired man walks away, he hears a scream coming from the woman in the bungalow.

The long-haired guy pulls a gun out from the back of his pants and heads to the bungalow. Up in the trees, a simian hand holds a basketball and then drops it. Dozens more monkey hands drop basketballs on the long-haired man.

Inside the bungalow the woman continues to sweep while two other people have an intense conversation in another room.

10/29/2011

A woman hears voices in the woods behind her and turns around to see a seething mass of monkeys and animals. Horrified she clutches her broom and backs through a large sliding door into a room. She tries to find protection against the wall. The animals are not paying attention to her. They look at the radio where sounds from a serial drama play out. A small ox and a chimpanzee break out of the crows and run towards the radio.

10/29/2011

……..

I go camping with a friends, so I cut out a bottle-pieced shape of fabric. Another group of people are coming to camp with us and their tent sites are easily marked in a neat line down a patch of land. I put a zoot suit on just before they arrive. They see the suit and love it. I feel embarrassed for not knowing how to speak Spanish. A large woman in the group smiles at me. An Asian woman in the group has a small dog. “I must shit rat-sized poop!” Without saying goodbye, I take a bike home to cut out another fabric vial.

10/31/2011

I wander away, find my friend MC and explore this amazing estate. We climb an odd metal conduit structure and wander through sunlit rooms. MC wanders off and I find the woman glowing in the sunlight.

I want to kiss her, but she recoils. Her father appears, lunges at me and pulls my arms behind my back. He leans in behind me and whispers that he gets the first kiss. He then begins to nibble my neck and lets me go. I flee.

I sit on a deck with AK, who is smoking a piece of palo santo. We discuss whether or not we want to go to a protest/concert. I drift off and begin to think about the beautiful woman. I wonder if I can steal her away from her father. Or perhaps I can kill her father and take her away from him.

11/10/11