Stenciling conjures up images of floral and fruit patterns in my head.
I think I can safely attribute this to the type of old-schools stenciling I believe I’ve seen my grandma do in the past. Not that stenciling of that sort is bad, it just isn’t necessarily my cup of tea.
Well, I stumbled onto a Tweet out in the Twitterverse the other day that shows that stenciling is more than just a bunch of pastel flowers or pretty images of fruit.
Old-School Stenciling
This tweet I stumbled upon was about Sten and Lex; Italian street artists that utilize an approach to stenciling called ‘hole school.’ Apparently, they cut a huge stencil, basically paste it on a poster (it appears the canvas they use is primarily wood as far as I can tell), paint over the whole thing in black and then peel everything away leaving behind a negative image. Through the removal of the stencil, scraps are left behind as the stencil is destroyed. From there, the scraps are actually left on and are allowed to become part of the art. The resulting stencils are just awesome.
Sten & Lex Stencil
If you want to see how the whole process goes down, check out the quick video below. And if you find yourself in Brooklyn in the fall, you might want to look up their showing at Brooklynite Gallery.
STEN LEX stencil poster from STEN on Vimeo.