If you’re looking for it, a walk down almost any city block reveals an ad hoc art gallery, where anonymous artists leave the names of alter egos, personal logos, political messages and figures -- human, animal and invented. Somewhere between the ubiquitous fliers and maverick graffiti that make up most of this evolving exhibition is sticker art -- small-scale artistic productions on mailing labels, contact paper, Hello My Name Is stickers and anything else that will stay up.
Although recent local shows such as The Street Changes Forever Everywhere and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare have gathered unexpectedly appearing art for display before, Stickerthrow, at Garfield Artworks, will be the first to focus exclusively on sticker art. Curated by New York City street artists Abe Lincoln, Jr. and Anera, Stickerthrow premiered this past winter in a skate shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Lincoln and Anera gathered submissions from the artists who have created the most famous images and helped define the scene internationally, and put out an open call to local artists. Next to the panels of neatly spaced stickers from invited artists was a giant panel covered in a sprawling, piece-by-piece collage of responses to the open call.
For Stickerthrow’s Pittsburgh appearance, a similar collage, courtesy of Pittsburgh contributors, will take shape next to the panels from the original show. “We wanted to get as many Pittsburgh people as possible contributing so people will recognize the images from in front of their house or at their bus stop,” says Juicy, local street artist and co-producer of the Pittsburgh show with fellow street artist, Horsie.
Horsie, who co-curated The Street Changes, is also featured as an invited guest from the original Stickerthrow. She pursued street art in order to circumvent a common artist’s dilemma. “There’s a competitive aspect to the traditional art world. You need to sell yourself to get a couple-of-weeks-long show in a gallery. People put a price tag on their work and I just wasn’t really excited about that idea. But I also didn’t want to just have piles of stuff at home in my room.”
“Sticker art is so unintimidating,” Horsie says. “It’s about play -- like kids with stickers on their headboards. And it’s about access -- access in terms of putting stuff up so people can see it without having to go to a gallery or pay to go to a museum. It’s about access in terms of other money issues -- it’s cheap. It’s also about art as an exchange instead of something that’s done in isolation.”
When sticker art became a common sight on city streets, in the early ’90s, any mailbox or utility pole could turn into a slowly evolving collaboration. One sticker shows up, then a few days or weeks later, a couple more join it. The artists might know each other personally or peripherally; they might not know each other at all.
Besides the obvious legal implications of unsanctioned public artistic expression that encourages many street artists to guard their identities, Juicy says, “Being anonymous but still being able to have a dialogue with anyone and everyone while being kind of top-secret -- I really like that idea. I feel like it even ruins it when you find out who another artist is. If you put a face to the name or a name to the face, there’s no more mystery.”
Even as the show flips some accepted aspects of street art -- its distance from the world of galleries, the removal of the artist’s identity from the experience of seeing the art -- it still defies the more formal gallery world in which it’s presented. “Stickers are so ... fun,” Horsie concludes. “We need fun art shows.”
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