Reading – Peel: Art of the Sticker

Recently I picked up a copy of Peel: Art Of The Sticker, a thick hardcover dedicated to sticker artwork and related forms of street art (and, for reasons I still don’t completely understand, even a few pages on vinyl toys). Created by Dave and Holly Combs — who are both responsible for Peel Magazine — this is a fun book that showcases the work of several different street artists.

The Amazon.com webpage says:

“Stickers have long been part of the street-art scene, but PEEL is the first magazine dedicated to this aspect of graffiti. Inspired by the wealth of stickers they saw all over New York City when they traveled there from Indianapolis, Indiana, to help with the Sept. 11 clean-up, Dave and Holly Combs have never been able to look at stickers the same. With every issue of PEEL, the couple feature art, and the community around it. Having evolved from a hand-made zine stuffed into plastic bags to a glossy, internationally distributed magazine, this book documents the development of PEEL and sticker culture, as both are intimately linked.”

I’m having a lot of fun flipping though this book (as with most art books there really isn’t much in the way of text) but the bound-in stickers at the end just aren’t all that much fun. If the book had been shrinkwrapped, and the stickers included loose, I could have seen the point. As it is, though, to play with the stickers would require damaging the book.

This is a fun book for anyone with an interest in street art and stickers, but it’s by no means a must own item. The web can no doubt give you just as much sticker art fun as this book does.