Stencil Pirates is the most comprehensive book dedicated to the street art of the stencil. The book contains an exhaustive collection of close to 1000 photographs from around the globe. The photos show work by hundreds of different artists, exposing the width and breadth of stencil graffiti, from political to abstract and purely aesthetic, from tagging to public announcements. Stencil Pirates offers in-depth writings on the complex history of stencil graffiti, its political context, and how stencils fit into the larger pantheon of street expression. It discusses stenciling as a way for political movements to resist and mark territory, whether as part of gentrification struggles in New York and San Francisco or as part of the general uprising in Argentina over the past couple years.

Stencil artists are the printmakers of the urban landscape, dropping art on sidewalks, walls, park benches, bus stops, store windows, etc. By far the most accessible form of printmaking, stencil artists simply need a piece of cardboard, a knife, a can of spray paint and something to express. Stenciling is a form of expression that boldly reclaims public space by inserting political or metaphysical messages into corporate landscapes.

Josh MacPhee’s art straddles a number of cultural mediums. He is a street artist, designer, curator, and activist. A street stenciler and poster maker for over a decade, he also runs a radical art distribution project, justseeds.org, as a way to develop and distribute t-shirts, posters, and stickers with revolutionary content. He organizes the Celebrate People’s History Poster Project, an ongoing poster series in which different artists create posters to document and remember moments in radical history. He also collectively organizes agit-prop cultural actions with ad-hoc groups of artists under various organizational names such as "Department of Space and Land Reclamation" and "Street.Rec."

The author will tour the west and mid west this winter.

See events page for details!