We've been friends for 15 years, Shepard Fairey reminds me, his memory of 1994 as clear to him as it is foggy to me. Perhaps because it was a significant year in his life, in many ways as important as 2008, when Barack Obama's election catapulted him out of the shadows of street art into guest appearances on The Colbert Report and Charlie Rose. His life was very different back then: a recent RISD grad who set up a print shop in Providence to support himself as a street artist, he was then known for his omnipresent "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" stickers and T-shirts. "All I really cared about was skateboarding and punk rock and hip-hop," he says. "All of that was very removed from Providence. Skateboard culture was on the West Coast, and I was interested in graffiti and street art, which was in New York. At that point I was very much someone who was hungry to be more in the thick of things but I didn't really know how to make that happen."
All that changed one summer when Carlo McCormick put a piece of Fairey's in a Paper-sponsored show he curated at Alleged Gallery. "So I dropped everything that I was doing, and my crew and I got into my station wagon and we drove from Providence to New York and I met you, I met Futura, I met Aaron Rose, Phil Frost, Thomas Campbell, Mike Mills that night. And that changed my life."
Today, Shepard "Obama 'Hope' poster" Fairey is one of the most famous artists in America, called upon by Time and Rolling Stone for covers and ensconced in the Smithsonian museum at the National Portrait Gallery. Because of his arrest in Boston on the opening night of his retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art and his lawsuit with the Associated Press, his profile in the courts of law and public opinion has risen dramatically. Business is booming as well at his design agency Studio Number One, where his commercial work for movies and major corporations keeps some 15 people busy. Next on his list is to enhance his art world reputation as his show travels to The Warhol Museum in October, followed by an exhibition of new work at the prestigious Deitch Projects in April.
David Hershkovits: It seems like when Barack Obama won, you won as well. Do you think your art helped elect Obama?
Shepard Fairey: A lot of people ask me that question, and it's really tough because if I say "yes," it sounds like I'm claiming some sort of responsibility, which I'm not. I think it made a difference because it provided a very valuable tool for people to say, "I support Obama." He had his logo, which was a great logo, and he had his slogans, but that portrait, that makes the human connection no one had created.
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