Misjudged Art: Shepard Fairy and the Street Art Community

Misjudged Art: Shepard Fairy and The Street Art Community

Shepard Fairey was born on February 15, 1970 and has emerged as a street artist from the skateboarding scene. He graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy and the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. He started his art career in 1984, when he began putting his art on skateboards and T-Shirts. Fairey created the Andre the Giant sticker in 1989 and it has grown dramatically due to collaborators duplicating his work. His work became widely known during the 2008 US election, specifically his Barack Obama "hope" poster. Those pieces of artwork managed to be seen, even though they were considered as an eyesore or an act of vandalism. Instead of having the street art community's artwork viewed as vandalism, Fairey changed the face of the community's and made it a radical art movement worth preserving.

Fairey launched his career with a series of posters, stickers and stencils combining the words "Andre the Giant has a Posse", and using the image of former wrestling star Andre the Giant. These were initially distributed by Fairey as well as the skating community in 1989 and started to pop up all over America. By the 1990's this image had become a global phenomenon and was being reproduced all over the world. This has since become the iconic logo for Fairey's clothing company. This logo is also featured not only on his clothing but also on posters, stickers and wall art all over the world. The image was intended to inspire curiosity and cause the masses to question their relationship with society. Andre the Giant's image was to be seen in urban society, which would also inspire other street artist to display their artwork on city walls. Society identifies the street art community as hooligans that vandalize every surface they find instead of viewing them as the creative artists that they are.

One of Fairey's most popular illustrations depicts Barrack Obama looking into the distance with the word "HOPE" written across the bottom of the poster in large bold letters. This image would achieve a rare exploit and become a visual emblem of a moment in American history, when Obama went on to win the 2008 election. The Obama campaign declined to have any direct affiliation with the poster because it had been "perpetrated illegally" by Shepard Fairey. He then made other posters featuring VOTE, PROGRESS, and CHANGE, which the Obama campaign accepted. Fairey distributed over 300,000 stickers and 500,000 shirts during the Obama campaign. Society identified Fairey as a graffiti artist and implied that his work would be crude towards Obama. However, he was simply an artist inspired by change in American society.

Rather than being identified as its own culture, the street art community is often linked to the hip-hop, gang, and skateboard cultures. All

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