VINNY RAFFA

About the Artist

Vinny Raffa is a street-art icon whose career began in the skateboarding subculture of the East Coast in the late 1980s. Born in Eastchester, Westchester County, New York, he launched his first streetwear venture and skateboard brand before evolving into visual art and public interventions. Raffa’s legendary “Vinny Raffa Has a Posse” stickers and bold graphics became symbols within skate, graffiti and urban culture.

Over time, his practice expanded beyond apparel and decks into prints, stencils, collage and painting—each piece rooted in visual rebellion, pop-iconography and community energy.

Artistic Practice

In Vinny’s work the boundary between street art and fine art dissolves: stickers, t-shirts and skateboard decks transformed into canvases and editions; stencil-spray imagery layered with collage, color, and texture. He draws inspiration from skate culture, album cover art of the 60s and 70s, urban signage and the spirit of self-expression on the margins. His images often feature his own face or avatar, inserted into the everyday world like a playful yet provocative mark of presence. Street art becomes autobiography. Pop imagery becomes rebellion. The result is a visual language that is immediate, accessible, and charged with cultural resonance. According to coverage, “He puts his face all over the place … people see it and when they meet him it’s like meeting Waldo.”

Through prints, original canvases and limited-edition works, Raffa elevates the DIY ethos of skate and street art into gallery form—while still retaining edge and accessibility. His work challenges the distinctions between high and low art, asks how the city writes itself on surfaces, and invites viewers to recognize the art in everyday stickering, tagging and sub-cultural signage.

Featured Exhibition at iO

Sticker City: Urban Markings & Pop Rebellion Solo Exhibition

In Sticker City, Vinny Raffa brings his street-wise vision into the expansive gallery space of iO Arts Center. The show features a curated selection of prints, oversized canvases, original sticker sheets and interactive wall installations that evoke the feel of a city surface layered with visual noise, history, humor and subversion. Visitors will walk through gallery zones where the familiar becomes unfamiliar: a wall of his iconic sticker-faces layered one upon another; large-scale collage-paintings that meld urban signage, skate graphics and pop imagery; and an experimental installation where visitors apply digital stickers to a live wall projection, echoing Raffa’s legacy of communal mark-making.

Beyond mere display, Sticker City invites participation: a “Tag-Wall” allows guests to leave their own mark in the spirit of Raffa’s early street interventions. The show aligns with iO’s mission to create art-as-experience, to blur boundaries, and to transform the gallery into active urban terrain.

Alignment with the iO Arts Center Mission

Vinny Raffa’s artistic vision dovetails perfectly with iO’s core values of interdisciplinary creation, sensory awakening, and community engagement. His transition from skate culture to gallery represents the very kind of boundary-crossing iO champions. His use of urban signage, sticker culture and graffiti heritage invites viewers to explore art where they often least expect it—on street poles, skate ramps, storefronts. Through Sticker City, visitors are not just spectators but participants, mirroring iO’s commitment to immersive and participatory art. Raffa’s work reminds us that art is everywhere, that the city is a canvas, and that culture is made, shared and transformed publicly.

Artist Philosophy

“I put my face all over the place, and in return people see it and when they meet me it’s like meeting Waldo.” “I make street art and skateboard art … I collaborate with other street/skateboard artists around the world.”