Street Roots • September 8-14, 2017
News
STICKERS, from page 5
As the battle between those putting up
the stickers and those taking them down
never know who stuck a particular sticker
continues, street artists have a fairly new
unless they caught the artist red-handed.
weapon in their arsenal: a special vinyl
Even though the police can’t currently
material called “Eggshell.”
focus on tagging, the city is still
It clings solidly to most clean surfaces
investing resources in
cleanup.
and breaks into tiny pieces rather
than peeling off, making it
Portland’s Office of
virtually impossible to remove,
Neighborhood
as Skam demonstrated with
Involvement houses a
an eggshell sticker of a
Graffiti Abatement
former pope stuck to a
Program. And its
waste bin in his living
budget tripled to
room.
$440,000 this fiscal
Muracchioli said the
year following an
majority of stickers
uptick in hate
she sees are on
graffiti. This uptick
public, not private,
included anti-Trump
property.
messaging
Skam said
categorized as hate
respectable paste-up
graffiti, which
artists follow a set of
accounted for nearly
guidelines, one of
half of it.
S T IC K E R A R T B Y K IT S K A
which is that you don’t
The program focuses on removing graffiti
put stickers or posters on private property
from private property, free of charge to the
unless the owner welcomes it, such as at a
owner, while referring graffiti on public
skate shop.
property to the appropriate agency. Its
If that’s the case, Muracchioli said, the
program coordinator, Juliette Muracchioli,
city wouldn’t move to enforce the graffiti
said that among the various government
laws unless it receives citizen complaints.
agencies that clean up graffiti and stickers,
Then they would try to work with the
such as TriMet and PBOT, the cost is likely
property owner to find a solution, such as a
in the millions.
permitted mural.
The program’s work had been complaint
“The process for us to enforce against
driven, but with its budget boost,
property owners is so lengthy that it is
Muracchioli said, her team can now be
rarely worth the staff time,” she said. “Our
proactive. This means they will approach
code requires that a warrant be drafted to
property owners to offer their graffiti
gain p e rm iss io n o n to th e p ro p e rty to
removal services.
remove the graffiti and then lien that cost
She said stickers become a problem when
against the property.”
they are stuck to the front sides of street
Conklin credits Muracchioli with being
signs, but she admitted, “There are some
more understanding of the street art
really beautiful stickers out there.”
community and the benefits of public art
But, she said, “the thing about stickers is
than her predecessors at the city abatement
that it takes so long to remove them
program. And, she said, the Portland Street
compared to painting and pressure washing.
Art Alliance has also been in conversations
Even large wheat pastes that go up can be
with Commissioner Chloe Eudaly regarding
pressure-washed off really quickly, whereas
potential changes to the city’s mural laws.
stickers, even a really small one, takes
“Chloe gets it,” Conklin said.
almost the same amount of time if not
longer to peel it off.”
Page 11
n a warm August night at about 10:30
p.m., Street Roots accompanied Skam
and Kitska as they sticker bombed
Northeast Alberta Street.
Kitska, whose artist name is inspired by
her Ukrainian upbringing, carried her
stickers in a little flip-pouch.
Neither covered their faces while sticker
tagging, although they conceal their
identities for photographs and when they’re
pasting up large posters.
Kitska would look around before slapping
up a sticker to ensure no one was watching.
She said she’s making up for being such a
square all her life. This is her little way of
being rebellious.
Skam was less cautious in his approach,
applying stickers right in front of
pedestrians as they walked past. He carried
with him a sawed-off Swiffer Sweeper he
had customized into a sticker applicator -
for reaching high places. He keeps a bucket
full of his paste mixture and a
couple of large paint brushes
on hand in the trunk of his
car.
He explained sometimes
they use tricks to divert
people’s attention away if
they seem to take concern
with their activities. They
might point at something,
yell someone’s name or
pretend to know the
person.
But on this particular
O
F o r S kam , it’s a b o u t th e
m e ssa g e , an d h e said th e
c u r r e n t p re sid e n tia l
evening, no o n e se e m e d to
care w h en th e y saw a stic k e r
being stuck. A few passers-by even
smiled.
S T IC K E R
Artists often slap stickers
next to their friends’ stickers to
say hello. In some cases, a new
artist will place a sticker alongside a better-
known artist to get noticed. This is called
“spot jockeying” or “side busting.”
Compared to Skam, Kitska is new to the
scene.
Two years ago, she was a college-trained
fine artist who hadn’t dabbled in street art
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WEDNESDAYS 2-7PM
but had been drawn to Skam’s work and
began communicating with him online.
He invited her to join a group of Portland
street artists in Seattle’s famous Post Alley
(think gum wall) as they threw up posters
one evening in November 2015.
“I had Googled ‘how to be a street artist.’
That’s how much of a dork I was,” Kitska
said.
She showed up with a couple of “dinky”
posters she had drawn and waited. She was
about to leave when a group of about 15
masked artists descended on the alley.
“I’m standing there in this crowd of street
artists, and they start pacing immediately,
like piranhas on a corpse,” she said. “It was
nuts.”
She has since created Kitska’s style
around creatures and figures from her
subconscious, she explained.
“Ever since I was little, I would have
these dreams about these tall, long
necked flowing-haired, antlered
figures,” she said. “And I never
really knew what they were as
a kid. They were comforting.”
Kitska said for her,
creating paste-ups and
stickers has become a
form of art therapy.
“It’s how my heart
connects to other
people,” she said.
o
C E N T R A L C IT Y
C O FFEE
administration has given him
p le n ty o f fodder.
“Right now, everyone needs
to be rebellious in their own way
because of what’s going on
politically in the world,” Skam said as he
reached up and slapped a zombie Pence
sticker onto the back of a street sign.
A R T BY SK A M
emily@streetroots. org
Twitter @greenwrites
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