CREATE & DESTROY

This archive documents the raw, analog screen-printed posters and spray-painted works of Los Angeles-based artists Dereck Seltzer and Tina St. Claire, known by their street art aliases Haunted Euth and Tfail. Active during the early to mid-2000s, their work helped define a gritty era of DIY street art in LA, before it was absorbed into mainstream culture.

Using fully analog methods such as hand-inked film transparencies, manual color separations, and traditional painting techniques, the duo produced thousands of posters, wheat-pasted throughout California during this period. Their DIY ethos ran deep: recycled newsprint, “oops” paint, homemade wheat paste, and even apartment bathrooms repurposed as makeshift screen washout rooms became vital to their practice.

Their guerrilla installations appeared on abandoned buildings, construction walls, and overlooked corners of the city. The process itself—working without permission, improvising materials, and embracing decay—was inseparable from the message. These pieces were never intended for galleries; they were created to live, erode, and disappear within the urban landscape.