About the SLAP Art Collection

Artist Statement

The SLAP Art Collection is an ongoing series of hand-made collages built around a single recurring element: the Magical Flag of Peace. Each piece is assembled by hand although some are very similar, no two are identical.

The project began as an exploration of repetition and variation: what happens when the same image is placed in slightly different configurations, on different surfaces, with different numbers of copies? What emerges from constraint? The flag is fixed. Everything else is open.

Over time the collection has grown into something closer to a body of research. It's a catalog of combinations, a meditation on symmetry, a collection of rules made and rules broken, and a record of moments when a piece was given away and went on to live somewhere else.

Tag Guide

Surface
Size	Physical dimensions of the surface, width × height in inches.
Orientation	Whether the surface is wider than tall (horizontal), taller than wide (vertical), or equal (square).
Material	The physical material the stickers are applied to: paper, cardboard, etc.
Color	Background color of the surface.
Border	If the surface has a border, its color is recorded. If not, it's recorded as "none."
Laminate	Some SLAPs have a transparent laminate applied over the whole piece. If it does, the pattern of the laminate is recorded.
Design
Stickers	The number of flag stickers used in the piece. If stickers extend beyond edges and wrap around, the whole sticker is counted even though only a fraction may be visible.
Symmetry	The two-dimensional symmetry of the overall arrangement (i.e., the stickers and their relative placement on the surface). The signature, date and number are ignored. 360° — A piece with 360° symmetry only looks the same when rotated a full turn. This is the least symmetric classification. 180° — A piece with 180° symmetry has the same pattern when rotated by half a turn. 1 Mirror — A piece with 1 Mirror symmetry indicates reflective symmetry across one axis. For mirrored symmetries the design elements on the Magical Flag of Peace (the stars and wreath) are ignored, and only the black and white halves are considered. 2 Mirrors — A piece with 2 Mirrors symmetry indicates reflective symmetry across two axes. Pieces with 2 Mirrors symmetry also have 180° rotational symmetry.
Pattern	The pattern category describes the position of the stickers relative to each other. stack — Stickers are arranged in a rectangular grid with one stacked on top or beside another. offset — Stickers are arranged in a brick-like layout with stickers above or below each other offset by half a sticker width. linear — Stickers are arranged in a single line along the long axis. unit — There is only a single sticker on the SLAP. none — There is a non-regular patterning of stickers.
Pattern Orientation	The pattern orientation describes how the stickers are oriented relative to the surface. horizontal — The long axis of the stickers are oriented along the same axis as the bottom (or top) of the surface. vertical — The long axis of the stickers are oriented along the same axis as the sides of the surface. angle (+) — The long axis of the stickers are oriented with a positive angle relative to the bottom of the surface. That is, the right side of the sticker is more towards the top of the surface than the left side. angle (−) — The long axis of the stickers are oriented with a negative angle relative to the bottom of the surface. no pattern — The stickers are arranged in such a way that there are multiple angles and there is not a clear classification.
Flag Orientation	The flag orientation is determined by how the black and white sides of the stickers are oriented relative to the other stickers in the pattern. aligned — All the stickers are aligned in the same direction. flipped — At least one sticker is aligned opposite to another. self — There is only one sticker in the SLAP.
Spin	The "spin" of the piece is a way of quantifying the total orientation of the stickers relative to their surface. A sticker that is oriented horizontally with the black on the right and the white on the left counts as a +1 spin. Every other sticker with the same orientation on that piece will add +1 to the total spin count of that piece. A sticker with the opposite orientation counts as a −1 spin. For stickers that are vertically oriented, they are counted as +1 when the black half is on top, and −1 when the black half is on the bottom. Spin is recorded as undefined or "und" when stickers are not in a regular pattern or are in an "infinite" shape.
Shape	The shape is classified by imagining a polygon drawn around the edges of the stickers on the surface. If a line drawn from any vertex of the polygon to any other vertex would only cross within the polygon, then it is defined as "convex." If any vertex to vertex line would extend outside the polygon it is defined as "concave." If any portion of a sticker extends beyond the boundary of the surface, the shape is defined as "infinite."
Flag Version	The Magical Flag of Peace design used on the stickers in the SLAPs project has some subtle variations. V1 — The original design of the MFOP. V2 — This is the current official design of the MFOP. The only difference is that the stars in the corners are slightly bigger than in the previous version. V3 — This version replaces two of the leaves of the wreath with "w4vp" and ".com".
Signature	I have changed my signature over the years and the use of one or another is largely dependent on my mood that day. "sjk" is the most common signature because it is the quickest.
Date	The date is simply the day that I made the SLAP.
Owner
Owner	The person this piece was given or sold to, if it has left my collection. Pieces on display are owned by S.J. Kranz. Pieces without an owner are available.
Date	The date the piece was transferred to its owner.
Price	Sale price. Gifted pieces have a zero value.
Note	Any additional context about the transfer.

Rarity

The rarity calculation is a fun way to determine how rare or common a particular piece is compared to other pieces in the SLAP collection. The calculation takes into account all the tags listed above (excepting the tags in the "owner" section). It should be noted that the rarity could be calculated many different ways, but for this collection I calculate the rarity of each SLAP as follows:

For each tag the total number of SLAPs that have that particular value are counted. Then the total number of all SLAPs is divided by that number. This yields a number between 1 and the total number of SLAPs. These numbers calculated for each tag are summed. This gives a "rarity score" which is a very arbitrary number.

Then, the SLAPs are ranked by their rarity score with the highest score being ranked first and the lowest score being ranked last. The percentile is simply an indication of the rank relative to the total number of SLAPs.

For example, as of 2026 April 22, there are 638 total SLAPs. SLAP 116 has a size of 17 in. by 11 in. There are 9 SLAPs in the collection with that size (11 in × 17 in is considered a different size). So the part of the rarity score determined by the "size" tag is 638 divided by 9 which is about 70.9. When this calculation is done for all other tags and summed, it gets a total score of about 250. This makes it the 97th most rare SLAP, and is in the 85th percentile for rarity (100% − 97/638 = 85%).

Please note, rarity is recalculated automatically whenever the collection grows, so scores shift over time as new pieces are added.