15 Street Art Terms You Should Know

Like any subculture, street art has developed its own slang. Many street art terms find their roots in the vernacular of graffiti culture, but street art encompasses a much broader range of creative interventions and therefore necessitates more terms. You don’t need to know the lingo to appreciate a mural, but here are 15 Street Art Terms You Should Know to give a bit of insight into street art culture.

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Spot jocking is when someone puts up work next to a popular artist because it will gain them attention. In this image, ROA's work is spray painted with the tag "Goog."

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Getting up means an artist is consistently putting work up around the city. When one notices that an artist has an impressive amount of work running, they might say that the artist is "really up."

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Childstyle is a work that is intentionally done in the manner of a kid's painting or that emulates the quality of art by a child.

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Tiling is gluing linoleum pieces permanently onto the street pavement with the same material used to create cross walks. Two notable tilers are Stikman and Toynbee from Philadelphia.

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Reverse graffiti is the result of leaving a mark, tag, or image by selectively cleaning a surface rather than applying paint.

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State-hired painters and property owners use buffing to cover up graffiti and street art. These "buff jobs" are often eyesores that leave large, irregular patches of paint over street art and graffiti pieces.

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Interventions are works that primarily focus on disrupting public space as opposed to most street art, which is more decorative. "Intervention" is an umbrella term that ranges from the "spontaneous sculptures" of Brad Downey, to Banksy's sneaking work in to museums, to the disturbing human-like sculptures by Mark Jenkins.

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Legal wall refers to either commissioned murals or designated areas that are legal painting free-for-alls.

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Wheatpaste is a homemade concoction used for putting up posters. It's relatively cheap and easy to make—a simple combination of flour, sugar, and water—and can be created in large quantities. Posters which have been put up with wheatpaste are referred to as wheatpastes.

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Stickering is a big part of graffiti and street art. Artists typically put stickers on newspaper bins, street signs, and poles. Sticky sides are when artists draw on the adhesive side of the sticker so that they can adhere their work to the inside of glass, like on newspaper bin windows and bus stop terminals.

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Getting clipped is when a piece is partially covered by a newer piece next to it.

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Pieces created with rollers are large-scale works, using house paint and paint rollers on long poles. This was first used in graffiti for making big block letters and later adopted by the street art community. The artists Blu, Aryz and Skewville are known for their use of rollers.

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Ad disruptions (or takeovers) occur when artists use advertisements and billboards as their canvases. Sometimes artists play around with the content of the ad, as in the work of Poster Boy and Kaws. Other times artists completely remove the ad and use the space to insert original work. Organizations such as Public Ad Campaign have made it their mission to thwart the power and ubiquity of advertisements by replacing them with art. Billboard Liberation Front, another organization, works for truthful advertising.

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Installations (or installs) are any sort of sculpture or 3D piece put on the street. These range from the metal and wood block pieces screwed onto the poles of street signs to mosaics—like those by Space Invader—to the glued-down characters of Stikman.

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The run time describes the length of time a piece has lasted on the street, from the moment it was put up to the instant it was removed, painted over, or worn away. Pieces that have long run times are impressive given the illegal nature of street art. Some artists, such as New York City's COST and REVS have posters and rollers that have been up for more than twenty years, and have become apart of the city landscape.

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