John Collins, professor of Global Studies, and Cathy Tedford, Director of the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, proposed a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary collaborative project that offers students, faculty, alumni, and others the opportunity to be part of a dynamic, global, investigative blog, Weave, and a digital archive, Street Art Graphics, to document the creative ways in which ordinary people make use of public space to express themselves.
Weaving the Streets Weavers are everywhere, and we are always looking for examples of how ordinary people are using public space to express themselves. In this blog, part of the larger “Weaving the Streets & People’s Archive” project based at St. Lawrence University, we are documenting and reflecting on examples of street art and other traces of street-based actions, movements, and forms of expression that are often ignored by mainstream media.
Street Art Graphics This digital image collection consists of over 2,200 street art stickers (or simply “stickers”) from Canada, Egypt, England, Germany, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, and the United States. Unlike bumper stickers, street art stickers typically measure about 2×2 to 4×6 inches in vinyl or paper. Vinyl stickers can be mass-produced in large quantities through fast, cheap online commercial printing services. Many “do-it-yourself” sticker artists also create one-of-a-kind doodles and drawings using crack-and-peel adhesive paper, while other artists use postal service or “Hello My Name Is” office labels to create more elaborate stencils and silkscreen prints. Seen at eye level or just beyond reach, stickers are ubiquitous in urban centers around the world, gracing almost every imaginable surface of the built environment. Situated metaphorically at the busy intersection of imagery and content—and informed by history, mass media, commerce, and pop culture—stickers address both the personal and the political.
