Sticker City: Paper Graffiti Art, by Claudia Walde, is the first book to examine the use of the sticker as an artistic medium. After a short history of "adhesive art, a subset of the booming street art scene", Walde profiles twenty-six sticker artists. As she acknowledges, sticker art is closely associated with other forms of
urban art, and the book also features early examples of graffiti and 'pochoir' (stencilling). (The first book on street art was
The Faith Of Graffiti, from 1974.)
Sticker City begins with a legal notice: "The publisher and the author in no way endorse vandalism or the use of graffiti for the defacement of private and state-owned property." Despite this over-cautious disclaimer, the publisher (Thames & Hudson) has released several other books on graffiti, including Subway Art (Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, 1984), Spraycan Art (Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, 1987), and Stencil Graffiti (Tristan Manco, 2002).
