HYPERALLERGIC

Peeling Back the Psychological Layers of
1980s Sticker Books

In her solo exhibition Sticker Book, Julie Alpert remains loyal to the elements of craft while reaching for intergenerational connections.

Lyndsay Knecht August 30, 2022


”…TULSA, OK — They were clean. They were simple. Sticker books were self-contained worlds until lifting the point of a tiny star required the help of a babysitter’s press-on nail. The range of choice could be vast, especially if you decided not to use the stickers in the book’s waxy pages and instead applied them to surfaces that took the adhesive and kept it forever (there were no take-backs when the neon rainbow unicorn found its place stuck to the kitchen table). When you peeled a sticker meant for the outside, the stakes changed. And so did the world, little by little, as symbols became icons in a material world before social media.

It would be a stretch to say we ’80s kids were being creative with the sticker books, which prepared us more for managing assets (or making a Spotify playlist) than inventing anything. At best they were an introduction to collecting. Julie Alpert magnifies that personal act and the readymade materials of semi-homemade craft kits in Sticker Book, her solo exhibition at Ahha Tulsa. Her towering symbols waver when low stakes give way to something more consequential, like placing those symbols in context with the wider world…”

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