Category: the faith of graffiti

“Paper Bullets: 100 Years of Political Stickers from Around the World” exhibition opens 13 Sept 2014

HATCH KINGDOM STICKER MUSEUM: PRESS RELEASE Paper Bullets: 100 Years of Political Stickers from around the World 13 September – 24 October 2014 Opening 13 September 2014 at 7:00 p.m. Publicly placed stickers with printed images and/or text have been used for decades as a form of political protest or to advocate political agendas. In the United States as early as the mid-1910s, for example, labor unions created the first “stickerettes,” or “silent agitators,” to oppose poor working conditions, intimidate bosses, and condemn capitalism. Later, during World War II, Allied and Axis countries dropped gummed “paper bullets” or “confetti soldiers”…

New stickers from Spain for digital archive and writing assignment

I haven’t had much time to post on Stickerkitty lately, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping busy with other things. I heard recently from SLU professor of modern languages, Marina Llorenta, that she’d like to repeat the assignment we created in 2012 to have her students conduct research on political stickers from Spain for her course on “Literature, Film, and Popular Culture in Contemporary Spain,” a project that later turned into an SLU art gallery exhibition called Pegatinas Políticas, which you can read about here. To prepare for the upcoming assignment this fall 2014 semester, I have been…

“Forward to Recovery” sticker

I recently found a great political sticker about capitalism and the economy that looks very much like an I.W.W. stickerette due to its size, medium, and message.  It states “Forward to Recovery – Increased Activity – Price Rise – Employment.”  We see “Business” dressed as a fat cat in a fancy suit and pinstripe pants racing forward while being dragged down by the heavy anchor of “Low Wages.”  The artist’s name is difficult to decipher; the signature looks like “Terry Costello,” but I can’t find anything similar online or in any of my I.W.W.-related books and articles.  The reason I…

Nelson Mandela and anti-apartheid stickers

Two stickers in my collection focus on Nelson Mandela and anti-apartheid in South Africa.  The first states “Stop Apartheid, Boycott Shell – Owen Bieber, UAW President and National CAP Chairman,” and the date 1985 is penciled on the back. Owen Bieber was then President of the American United Auto Workers Union and a strong Mandela supporter.  In 1984, Bieber was even arrested in an anti-apartheid demonstration in DC.  An article entitled “Campaign to Boycott Shell” in the United States Anti-Apartheid Newsletter (Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 1986) describes Bieber’s role in the campaign and the call for “Shell and other…

Vote Republican 1926 sticker

I recently came across a U.S. political sticker from Iowa in 1926 that is one of the first of its kind, from what I’ve seen, that isn’t an I.W.W. Wobbly labor union stickerette (see previous posts on I.W.W. stickerettes).  What’s interesting, however, is how Ralph Chaplin, a 1910s-era I.W.W. key artist/agitator, talked about printed labels on various fruit and vegetable cartons that helped inspire him to create political stickers.  I’ll dig up those references for a later post.

“Weaving the Streets & People’s Archive”

Stickerkitty is collaborating with The Weave: Mediocracy Unspun on a new project entitled Weaving the Streets & People’s Archive (WSPA).  John Collins, professor of global studies at St. Lawrence University and co-founder of the Weave, and I put together a proposal to create “a new blog and digital archive that will document the creative ways in which ordinary people make use of public space to express themselves” (excerpted from our proposal abstract).  We learned on Monday that our proposal was accepted and will be funded for the first two years by a grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Crossing Boundaries: Re-Envisioning…

A Sticker A Day: Western History and Pop Culture through Street Art Stickers

I’ve got a new angle for my sticker book – to select 365 stickers and tell a story each day with a sticker.  I worked on January today, and here below is what I have so far.  Dates in bold mean I know of a sticker in my collection that could match the event.  In some cases, there is more than one event, so I’ll have to choose later.  Dates in italics mean I’ve already found the sticker image file to match the event.  Ultimately, I’ll write a few paragraphs for each day/sticker of the year. A Sticker a Day:…

“Stickerette” ad in 1917 I.W.W. Solidarity newspaper

This is the first image I’ve ever seen of someone putting up stickers.  I found it in two issues of an I.W.W. newspaper called Solidarity published in Cleveland on September 9 and 16, 1917.  Stickerettes were advertised in Solidarity between at least June 24, 1916, and August 25, 1917, though I’ve seen a reference that they might have been advertised as early as November 20, 1915.  In 1916, one could buy stickerettes in packages – 110 per package cost 15 cents, or a box of 1,100 cost $1.00. I’ve been trying to find photographs of stickerettes put up on buildings or…

The Wicke case continues

Good news.  Guy Wicke is indeed the son of James T. Wicke.  Here is what Guy wrote in response to my email. James T. Wicke is my father.  He died suddenly when I was 17, so obviously anything from his youth or political activism during the 60s-70s is a treasure beyond words for me.  The Pied Piper Lane address is my grandparents’ house (his childhood home).  I’ve never heard of the organization he was supposedly acting secretary of, but I wonder if it was a bit of tongue-in-cheek grandiosity.  He was a fan of that type of humor.  Or maybe…