Open Walls Baltimore with Sten & Lex from Italy

Open Walls Baltimore is attracting some of the biggest street art talents from around the world. Baltimore native Martha Cooper followed Gaia through the streets of Southwest Baltimore neighborhood SoWeBo pasting up a rendition of Martha Cooper’s 1978 photo of HE3 with pigeons on a Lower Eastside rooftop.

Her latest follow up is with Sten and Lex doing what they do best, and leaving an entire side of a building in the Station North district of Baltimore. This is what Martha Cooper had to say:

“Sten & Lex are a pair of Italian street artists who have worked together for over 10 years. Together they developed a complicated, labor intensive black and white stencil technique to render images in a way similar to halftone printing in newspapers.

In Baltimore the pair tackled a huge wall that presented a lot of challenges. First they prepared the wall by grinding the surface and painting it white. Then they papered the entire wall. Unfortunately they made a mistake in their centimeters to inches conversion so had to reprint the image in the correct size losing precious time in the process.

After pasting, they carefully sliced and peeled away the paper from the black lines leaving white space which they sprayed black. Finally they partially stripped away the leftover paper to reveal a spectacled face, positioned horizontally on the wall. They purposely left dangling strips of paper blowing in the wind to gradually wear away. The final image must be seen from a distance to get the full effect.”