Hey-oh!

Its another Failure Friday!

What fun.

This time it’s for a Stencil Revolution Stencil Challenge. The theme: Stencil Revolution!

What does that site, where so many of us share work and meet other stencilers online, mean? How do you represent it visually?

Well, I thought I would do it by melding some of the constantly flogged SR dead horses- Che and Stormtroopers!

After making the stencil, but before spraying it, I realized that it might have been done before, and, sure enough, a google image search for “Che Stormtrooper” revealed no less than 4 previous designs! (Though, I must say, I like mine best…)

(The most well known design is by Urban Medium, and they’re selling photos, prints, and even a statuette of it! Actually, they’ve sold out!)

I was quite upset at first, it sucks thinking you just did a clever backflip only to check over your shoulder and see a small crowd of people performing backflips in the same way! But then I thought “How perfect!” So much of SR is biting, both intentional and unintentional. People “Bite” all the time just because they’re covering the same material, referencing the same things, and using the same techniques! I mean, I bit those other folks (who knows who really did it first) without even knowing because we’re flogging the same horses! It’s can be even worse on SR, where the mechanical photoshopped stencil technique dominates.

Here’s how it goes; two artists both decide to make a stencil of a popular band. They both do a google image search and they both choose the same common picture of the lead vocalist. Then they both put it through an identical or almost identical photoshop process to make their stencil. They print, cut, and spray, and the one that uploads their stencil pictures first calls the other one a biter!

Anyway- I then went out to spray my stencil, and everything went to hell. It was only drizzling, but the paper I used to cut my stencil (garbage-picked Hip-Hop posters) was very sensitive to the moisture, and I watched, feeling helpless, as my stencil disintegrated underneath my floundering hands!

This crap (I’m glad that SHIT is written underneath it) is what I managed to get, and my stencil was destroyed, so there’s no chance at re-spraying.

I was quite upset at first, But then, once again, I thought “How perfect!” So much of SR is fatalistic excuses for not getting up, not having photos, not making art, not trying again, not buying paint, not doing it, basically.

Anyway, I think that all in all, this stencil is very SR.

BTW, I don’t dislike SR, I realize that I’ve made it sound terrible, but it’s more than repetitive, generic styles, excuses and defeatist attitudes.

But it’s got that too.

UPDATE!

Holy friggin frick!

I was just browsing thru their website store and it turns out they did a skeletal, skull-like kool aid man holding graffiti accoutrements too!

Only theirs is jumping right, and holding a poster and a brush!

While mine is jumping left, and holding a spray can!

GOOD GOD DAMN, I DIDN’T THINK THAT DEAD KOOL-AID MEN WERE A STENCILING “DEAD HORSE”.