Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey
Frank Shepard Faireyis an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist, illustrator and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse"sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design, which appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGraphic Designer
Date of Birth15 February 1970
CityCharleston, SC
CountryUnited States of America
I don't have this obsessive need to do street art all the time because it's already opened doors for me.
Most campaigns rely on photographs because the moment you do something that is a graphic interpretation where any artistic license has been taken, I think a lot of people are scared that it's going to be perceived as propaganda.
When I think about how I want to reach an audience, I just wanted to make pieces that were inspired by something that gave me so much pleasure.
When you walk down the street and see something in a crazy spot, there's something powerful about that. The street will always be an important part of getting art out there for me.
I admire Ai Weiwei for his art and his activism. His art is beautiful in form, and in function embodies the principles of populism and social consciousness I aspire to in my own practice.
Propaganda has a negative connotation, which it partially deserves, but I think there is some propaganda that is very positive. I feel that if you can do something that gets people's attention, then maybe they'll go and find out more about the person.
I do think that copyrights and intellectual property are important - it's important to be able to keep people from making verbatim copies of a particular creation that could somehow hurt the creator. If I spend time conceiving and making a piece of art and somebody else sees that it has market value and replicates it in order to steal part of my market, then that's not cool.
Just because you've reached a certain level of success, that doesn't mean you've become corrupted by the system.
There's good and bad in every arena. It's funny, some people, the reason they're in the underground is because they're lazy and don't make things happen for themselves.
The Internet hasn't had a chance to really get to where people look at it with the proper level of scrutiny. There's so much bullshit on the Internet. It doesn't get filtered out because it's such a new medium.
If the idea that my safety can only be enhanced by putting other people's privacy and safety in danger, then I don't want to be more safe.
I think "punk" should really be defined as paving your own way creatively and by defying any sort of orthodoxy or commercial pressure.
I think the Internet has definitely made it easier for people to have stuff seen, but it's also encouraged a level of ADD, where you see so much that if it doesn't make an impact on you immediately, you don't look at it.
What excites me is that, when things are tough, people become resourceful, and now with the Internet, social networking and the ability for people who in the past had been relatively powerless, they have tools to be able to spread ideas and organize. The urgency is there and the tools are there and I think that the possibility for really, really powerful results is there. I think it's all brewing, it's all bubbling up right now.