Tag Archives: 2:AM

Tripping… by 2am

So I moved this weekend, yesterday evening to be precise…

After 10 years!

As you can imagine, in the course of a decade I managed to cram a ridiculous amount of stuff into various hidden nooks and crannies.   I thought I was traveling light.  I thought it would be easy.  After repeated Goodwill donations and Salvation Army pickups throughout the years, I thought I was in good shape.

I was wrong.

I’ll be digging out for days, and in the interest of keeping my sanity, and my day job, my next few posts will be short and sweet.

Here another sticker from outside what is no longer my home!  (Incidentally, it’s probably a good depiction of how my movers were feeling about hour five into the job… I can’t thank them enough… heaps of gratitude to Crispin & Eric from Anonymous Movers!)

BTW, anyone want to rent a cool loft in the hood???

west oakland stickers, stickers by 2am, tripping

Sticker Kick-off!

So last week I focused on murals, and believe me, there are many more to come… we haven’t even scratched the surface.  But I want to take a 180 this week and talk about the very different world of small-scale Sticker Art.

While murals can be produced by individual artists, more often they are the products of collaborative efforts, with students and community members coming together to contribute to large scale efforts under the direction of one or a few professional artists. They can take months or more in the planning & production, and often live on in the public space for years, even decades… note our “Oceanus” entry from last week, first produced over 30 years ago and still beautifying Claremont Avenue (with help from a restoration in 2003).

Stickers, on the other hand, are fast and inexpensive to produce… perfectly bite-sized projects for the solo artist.  They’re also easy to transport and affix in any number of places.  And compared to large scale murals, they have rather limited permanence (depending upon the materials used), and will often fade, disintegrate, or simply be removed within a relatively short period of time.

We’ll delve into more details as the week continues… how to make ’em, where to stick ’em, famous sticker artists, and more.  But for now, here’s my first entry:
oaktownart_20090907

Someone graced the speed bump signpost outside my home with this one…  I love it!

It shows “2:AM” in the lower right-hand corner… don’t know if this signifies the artist somehow… these things are usually anonymous.