Shepard Fairey, "MAYDAY: The Politics of Street Art"
The Los Angeles-based artist and designer behind the ubiquitous Obey Giant stencil and the now legendary Obama HOPE poster, talks about his life, his work and his move from the street to large-scale museum exhibitions.
Shepard Fairey is the man behind OBEY GIANT. What started with an absurd sticker he created in 1989 while a student at the Rhode Island School of Design has since evolved into a worldwide street art campaign. In 2003, Fairey founded Studio Number One, a creative design firm dedicated to applying his ethos at the intersection of art and enterprise. In 2008, Fairey's HOPE portrait of Barack Obama became the iconic image of the presidential campaign and the original image now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In May of 2010, his exhibition MAYDAY was the final show to be mounted at Dietch Projects, in New York City. His work has also been exhibited in museums worldwide.
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