Open Walls Baltimore - Sten & Lex, Italy

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.