Sticker Theory

I went to a bar in Santa Barbara by myself the other night with the intention of finishing my book over a beer. A stranger came up to me and asked if they could join me for a Guinness. I accepted, as they looked relatively around my age. We got around to talking about all sorts of things, our topics ranging from politics to college to family life and lots of things in between. 

They eyed the two stickers laying on the table top near my other belongings, and asked about them. I explained that I draw stickers from time to time, and they followed up by asking why stickers. Why stickers? I hadn’t thought about that in awhile – I’ve just been making them happily since COVID. So I had to think about it for a second, and I came up with these thoughts:

I’m convinced that stickers are the best medium of art. It’d take a lot to convince me otherwise. They’re special in their ability to be extremely site-specific or to simply exist anywhere at random; It’s up to you, the creator of the sticker, where you want to place them. In a world with pretentious gallery cultures of varying degrees and giant conglomerate companies that shove the same 10 people down your throat, it’s nice to be able to put your art up anywhere. The world – without any rigidity and structure –  is your exhibition space. 

In that vein, your audience is unknown. You have no idea who (if anyone) is going to see your stickers, and there’s something really beautiful about that to me. It creates a two-way anonymity that lets the art speak for itself. I’ll never know what anyone thinks of my stickers. They’re viewed in an ephemeral way, perhaps even looked past as quiet vandalism that blends in with the rest. But I like that ephemerality; I feel like it speaks to stickers as a medium.

In the way that I create stickers, no two are the same. I make them by hand in a super crummy way, laminating them poorly with Scotch tape. This causes them to degrade over time, eventually becoming illegible or faded due to weathering. Again, I embrace this temporality; my stickers are a microcosm of a larger, transient art world which goes through phases and cycles, much like life itself. Nothing is permanent, and stickers are a great way of communicating that without hitting you over the head with it. I wonder if anyone’s ever seen one of my stickers after all of the colors have faded or the top layer has started to peel. 

I’ve made thousands of stickers at this point and have put them up all over the world. I have no idea how many of them are still up, and I know for a fact that a few of them have been taken down. Some are more intricate than others, and some feel almost impossible to part with. But that’s what I love so much about making stickers – you create something for the sake of letting it go. It’s not about a portfolio or a keepsake, it’s about putting it out into the world for anyone to see if they’re looking.