From the earliest cave paintings to the kid who is right now drawing an unflattering stick figure of his math teacher, art is a basic human expression. The definition of good art changes with the times, moving from attempting a perfect representation of someone’s likeness, to seemingly random dots and lines meant to represent an image, a thought, a feeling. The outsider has moved into the castle, and what was once regarded as vulgar, illegal, or juvenile is the current trend.
    Fruit box labels, comic books, and graffiti all have crawled up to recent legitimacy. The latest art form to emerge from the scrap pile is the once lowly sticker, perhaps not yet taken seriously because it costs about a dime to produce and is usually given away free. While stickers have been around for a while, their power is only now being realized, as pieces like Shepard Fairey’s Obama graphic illustrates. Unlike most museum pieces, which are rarely viewed by more than thousands in a lifetime, a well-placed sticker can be seen by millions within days.
    The guy now known as Sticky Rick didn’t grow up doodling on his binder or carefully placing his sticker collection into neatly marked binders. The fascination of peeling and slapping art onto various items grew until, as he became an adult, it became an obsession, urging him to move more art than possibly any art dealer in Los Angeles. He wouldn’t give up the name on his birth certificate, but that’s okay. Mention Sticky Rick to some of his famous friends and customers—Shepard Fairey, John Van Hamersveld, Make One among them—and they’ll know exactly what and who you’re talking about.

Risen Magazine: Did you collect stickers as a kid?
Sticky Rick: I had lots of stickers, but for me it was mostly baseball cards. Same kind of nerd thing, though. The first sticker I recall owning was from the sci-fi classic Them, where a giant ant was scaling a wall. [Laughs]