SHEPARD FAIREY

by HARVEY KUBERNIK

Clad in loose fitting blue jeans and a Velvet Underground t-shirt, a Coke firmly in hand, Shepard Fairey greets me at the door of his warehouse/office in downtown LA. The place has the air of an architect’s office mixed with a small record label: paints, fabrics and art materials dominate the place; Jimi Hendrix and Woody Guthrie silk screens cover the floors, classic rock tattoos that constantly remind the half dozen or so staff members that music helps to unlock the creative process.

“I play a lot of music during creation,” Fairey says in an energetic burst. “There’s music going in my office and my studio everyday.”

And music, especially classic rock and punk, is currently his artistic frontier. Fairey, who is 40, is part fanboy, music geek and rock historian all wrapped up in a Quentin Tarantino-like whirr of enthusiasm. Like most people his age, the Sex Pistols and the Clash welcomed him to teenagerdom. He retreated to the garage with his music and began designing t-shirts.

“I first got into making t-shirts because I really wanted to make my own stencils of imagery from my favorite music,” Fairey says. “That was like the way that I could actually even personalize that same experience of like looking at the record and looking at how they embodied their thing visually. Then, well, I’ve got to wear it and take it further.”

As the eighties were bleeding into the nineties and Kurt Cobain, Pulp Fiction and snowboarding were about to make mainstream pop culture do cartwheels, a strange “Andre The Giant Has a Posse” sticker began appearing in urban landscapes all over the country. No one quite knew what to make of it but Fairey knew what he was doing—sorta. Although Fairey’s Obey Giant methods and ideology are rooted in self-empowerment and reinforced by the DIY counterculture of punk rock and skateboarding, while taking cues from contemporary rock music, popular culture, commercial marketing and political messaging, he thought the sticker wouldn’t amount to much more than a one-off joke. But it was, bafflingly, an immediate and emotional phenom; its equal hints of humor, sarcasm, suggestion, and reverse psychology resonated greatly with Gen Xers. “When I made the first Giant stickers,” Fairey says. “I never thought I was beginning a project that would inspire and permeate most of my art and career for the next 17 years and counting.” And, well, even he couldn’t have dreamed that one day his art would influence a presidential election. Fairey’s art reached a new height of visibility and prominence in 2008, when his 500,000 “HOPE” posters of Barack Obama became the iconic image of the campaign (and became a cover for Esquire magazine) helping to fuel an unprecedented political movement. The original image now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. (Obama sent Fairey a letter “thanking him for using your talent in support of my campaign.”)

But these days, it’s all about music. In 2010, Fairey provided the front cover design for author Antonino D’Ambrosio’s book A Heartbeat And A Guitar Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears; he did a couple of limited edition Jimi Hendrix images in conjunction with the Hendrix estate; he created a logo and a poster for Dylan and Petty; and has even given John Lennon and Yoko Ono the “Fairey treatment” by doing a limited edition screen print of the couple. “As an artist I grew up in the post-Warhol era,” Fairey says. “For me the idea of giving new power to an existing image with some sort of artistic transformation so that the end result both immediately resonates but also re-sensitizes is not an easy job but it’s an important job.” He’s even taken a shot at re-sensitizing the public to former louche Brit bad boy, Russell Brand, by designed the book jacket for Brand’s memoir, Booky Wook 2. “He’s my neighbor,” Fairey says, proudly. “We also worked together on a pop-up shop in Los Angeles at the Beverly Center called The Free Store. It housed some art, personal items of Brand, and even a dress from Brand’s wife Katy Perry.” The Brand/Fairey collaboration also encouraged people and patrons to trade an unwanted item of their own for an item in the store.

Would you think this boy’s insane? Spill it all over the page. Indeed. Now let's let the man talk...

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