Going through my collection of sticker photos, there are just some finds that I can't help but be tremendously impressed by. A few are because of how well the final photo turned out. Sure this is stroking my ego a bit but when I manage to get that angle or the settings just right, it really does transform these sticker finds into something special. For other photos, it's the story that I managed to uncover about the sticker. The fact that I found a Canadian artistic social statement here in Pittsburgh is still great. Or there is the sticker in East Liberty for a presidential campaign from the 90s that I still don't quite understand how it's standing. There are also all of the great interviews that people have been kind enough to give me, bringing so much more meaning to the sticker than I could even guess at. And then there are the designs that are just so impressive to begin with. I'm pretty sure I just stood there in the middle of the Waterfront staring at this sticker when I originally found it. At first it was because I was trying to figure out what exactly I just stumbled across, wondering who could be behind its creation. The longer I stared though, the more I began to appreciate it. Being just shades of white and gray, this sticker is subtly shaded to bring out the definition of the skull without going too far into the usual skull tropes. It makes it feel so realistic for how fantastic of a design it is. There is also so much detail in it for being such a small image. When I finally did start taking pictures, I ended up taking 5 different exposures of this just trying to figure out that right balance of background and sticker. Obviously there's no way this sticker wouldn't grab your attention, it just needed to be given the space to do so effectively.
When I decided to use this sticker tonight though, I knew that there was no way I'd actually find anything for it. For how detailed of an image it is, there really aren't any big identifying features to this design even when you zoom in. It also probably doesn't help that the only way I can really describe this image is devil skull which is not terribly descriptive. A lot of ideas fall into this fairly broad description: human skulls with tiny devil horns, more animalistic ones with realistic curved horns, your typical cartoon devil, and for some reason a fair amount of skulls with a snake. Well alright the last one isn't that odd since I think symbolically it can translate into a sign of evil and demons, but still wasn't expecting that many to pop up in my search. So I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I actually did stumble across something that seemed to match this image. Unfortunately though, this find has kind of confused and complicated things. In my image search results I found a picture of a miniature figurine that had the same defining characteristics as tonight's sticker. The long curved horns, an open mouth with the same teeth configuration, deep set eye sockets, and the diamond shape nose all seem to match perfectly. The artist behind this little statue is Magdalena Ladwik and her site is called Sandwomancraft. Now here is where it starts to get a little confusing, Magdalena is originally from Poland but is currently living in Ireland. And while it isn't unrealistic for stickers and art to make their way to Pittsburgh from across the pond (considering I did find a German music label a few months ago) these kind of things do cause me to pause and reassess my find. There is also the fact that searching through her site, I can't find any example of her venturing into stickers as a creative outlet. She's got quite a few amazingly intricate mini book sculptures, some drawings and illustrations but no stickers. I even checked her Etsy page and I didn't see anything. It could very well still be her creation, the images are so similar, but I find it bizarre that there isn't some remnant or hint that she did something like this.
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Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
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