Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey created an empire around his pop art / street art influenced designs. He is arguably one of the kings of the street art community. Many would argue that he cannot be defined as solely a street artist. And they would be right.

Fairey started promoting his artwork in a repetitive and publicly obvious way. Stickers. Fairey's "Andre the Giant Has a Posse..." A.k.a "OBEY" helped him slip into the street art world. He created the design after graduating while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. However, his work expanded and flourished quite exponentially. He has had numerous exhibitions and has established himself as an iconic graphic artist. He became most well known in the wider community for his Hope poster design during the Obama campaign. The design quickly became a memorable and influencial aspect of the Obama campaign during 2008. Initially, campaign officials argued to have no affiliation with the artist. There was some controversy, as the design was being popularly spread in an illegitimate manner (graffiti, stickers, posters) by Fairey. Eventually, however Obama was grateful toward Fairey and wrote him a letter of thanks.

Here are some examples of his work:

Andre:

 Andre the Giant Has a Posse:

Obama:

 

Other Works:

Fairey’s dedication and passion as a street artist are evident through his continual prevalence. He may have expanded as a significant modern artist, but he always stayed true to the street art community. Fairey had been arrested numerous time for grafitti related incidences. It wasn’t until February of 2009 that Fairey’s arrest was more noteworthy. Fairey was arrested in Boston for two tag graffiti - related acts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/07/shepard-fairey-arrested-i_n_164872.html

(I’ll design a post around the concept of tagging but here’s a little intro: http://www.wikihow.com/Graffiti-Tag).

I first found out about Shepard Fairey while eating at Nice Slice Pizza on Thayer Street in Providence. His artwork is all over the walls and his stickers are handed out for free at the counter. I asked about the artwork one day, got a name and started researching. I made connections to the Obama poster and found it pretty neat that there was a major accumulation of his work 5 minutes from my house.  A year or two later, while in high school, a student teacher taught a lesson on pop art and used Fairey as an example artist, whom we could chose to model our work off of. This was my weak/rough interpretation, using Dwight from “The Office” as my focus:

...I know...pales in comparison