Sep 272011
San Francisco
All Around Town
Stencils
Stencils are a fun, down and dirty way to place art on the street. Most of their creators you will never know, but the creator of these is out in the open. Jeremy Novy began stenciling koi fish on the sidewalks, often on top of graffiti tags, to “beautify the area.” There are now more than 2,000 of his koi throughout the city, including commissioned ones at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Quan Yin Meditation Center, Cafe Flore and the hair salon Every Six Weeks.
This was on a mailbox on Folsom Street (since painted over). I often thought it was a representation of Matt Taibi’s book Griftopia, where he uses the term Vampire Squids to refer to Wall Street – (notice the Lincoln of the five dollar bill.)
These are cool. Love the koi.
Where I run there is a stencil of a blackbird on his back and the words read ‘roadkill’ in English it makes me laugh every time. Maybe because it’s on my way back from the run and I’m thinking… I feel ya blackbird I feel ya.
Love the koi! The squid thing is very strange indeed:)
I spotted the koi on the Communal Global link and had to check it out. I would love to have this stencil…we have a koi pond in our yard. I grew up in Chicago, but now live in Wisconsin. I love it here, but still miss the city and the ever changing artwork. Nice photos (PS I use blogspot too, and changed the HTML code in the templte to allow for larger pictures)