Brother in Sticker Art: Starheadboy
Stickers in the street from: 2006
City: Seattle
State: U.S.A.
1 - Introduce your sticker art project
I’m Starheadboy, a self taught multimedia creative living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I’ve been dabbling in stickers and street art forever. I’ve put stickers in the streets for a long time, but they got a ton more attention when I moved to Seattle in 2006. I lived in the suburbs before that, there wasn’t much culture or art appreciation there, the city is the opposite, it is vibrant with art and culture.
The characters that would probably be the most recognizable are my starheadboy hooded skull face, the penguins, and the burrito unicorn project. The starheadboy hooded character originated back in 2005, it was based on some autobiographical comic strips that I would draw on a daily basis. The penguins, which are a simple line drawing with long legs and a beak that most people mistake for a sad face, originated in 2006. The burrito unicorn project started in 2010, it has taken the form of stickers, paste ups, and “missing pet” flyers on the streets. I’ve put up thousands of those flyers from 2010 to the present day, looking for Pablo, the lost burrito unicorn. Little known fact: the phone number on the flyers is my real number. It’s been a super fun, ongoing project. Besides these ones, I do a lot of what I call “nonsense stickers which are little phrases and sayings hand painted on sticker vinyl with a little character. I very rarely have the name Starheadboy on my stickers, which traditionally has made it harder for people to know who the artist is. That’s changing a bit, I’ve been putting my name on most of my paste ups lately.
I spend the bulk of my day writing, drawing, and creating artwork. All my work comes from a stream of consciousness and I feel that’s how my street art is too. Putting work out on the street was a natural progression, I feel like it is my conversation, connection, and expression with life. I feel like my work connects in a way to people through personal politics, humor, and a connection in this journey of life. I don’t have an overall huge message, it’s more of a “we are here right now, enjoy and feel this journey”. Also, my more humor based nonsense stickers are just pure fun to make and I hope they put a smile on some faces of people going through their day.
2 - In what creative ways have you collaborated with other sticker artists?
I’ve collaborated with a lot of different sticker artists throughout the world for over ten years now. Stickers are an amazing vehicle to collaborate, I love that. I live in the Seattle area, which is only a couple short hours from Portland, Oregon (which anyone in the sticker scene knows is a huge, explosive scene with tons of amazing artists). Street art is beautiful, fun world that I am thankful to be apart of, I’ve met so many incredible people through it, lifelong friends.
3 - Have you ever organized an event about sticker art? If not, you can write something about an event you have attended
I haven’t put together my own sticker event, I helped out some with one of the Sticker Nerds shows down in Portland, I love the sticker heads down there and the whole scene they’ve built.
4 - What are your future projects in the world of sticker art?
I don’t see a time that I’ll ever stop doing stickers and putting work out on the streets. Besides street art, I make most my living off of my paintings, block prints, and comic zines. I write and draw most of the day. I do everything from comic strip books to murals. I also do sculpture and occasionally animation. I never want to put limits on what I’m exploring, especially medium wise, I’m always looking to expand.
5 - What sticker artists do you admire or are important to you?
As far as favorite sticker artists, their have been so many, too many rad ones to name. I’d have to say definitely Narboo, he’s Seattle based and one of my best friends. We’ve had around a decade of art adventures, roaming around the city. So many fun moments with that guy, and his artwork is always awesome and engaging.
There have been so many awesome sticker artists all over the world that I’ve been a fan of Portland is really close to Seattle, they have a huge sticker culture there, I’ll concentrate on that. Everyone I’ve met there are super gracious and cool. Besides being one of the nicest people that I’ve ever met, SKAM is a super prolific artist and he has a magical studio. I love that dude. RX Skulls, Voxx Romana, Kitska, Winston the whale, Mr. Say, Deadred, Lame, the 2MA crew, Wokeface. Awesome artists and scene down there.
Contatcs:
Website: starheadboy
Instagram: starheadboy
