Shepard Fairey: Recreation project
Frank Shepard Fairey was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in the United States of America, on February 15th, 1970. He is a street artist, political artist and muralist, who is known for his street art, graffiti, street poster art, and clothing line. He uses a variety of painting techniques as well as screen printing and printmaking, his art is symbolic and normally trying to convey a message through portraits and simple sentences or singular words. Street art is visual art that is created in public locations so everyone can view it at any time, when done without permission it is often referred to as graffiti and illegal in most places, Fairey himself has been arrested a few times for this reason. It is commonly done with spray paint, stencils and flyposting.
Fairey attended Rhode Island School of Design, while he was there he produced the Andre the giant has a posse sticker which originated from the now late French professional wrestler, this
piece later transformed into his OBEY art campaign, when he created the sticker he didn’t create it to have meaning "The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker", the sticker was actually created to show a friend how to stencil. He worked as a graphic designer for a while to maintain a steady income as he was losing fan base from his anti-bush and anti-war-in-Iraq propaganda. When Fairy is working on
larger murals has a crew of 4 other people who assist him, one of which is the baby off the cover of "Nevermind" by Nirvana. During the night time Fairey occasionally DJ's under the names "DJ Diabetic" and "Emcee Insulin", he is a type 1 diabetic. Fairy has been arrested 18 times on vandalism or related charges. He has designed for many, including wedding invitations for Katy Perry, album covers and artwork for; smashing pumpkins, Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, will.i.am and has also done a Google doodle in honour of Martin Luther King jr.'s birthday, done a redesigned cover of George Orwell’s animal farm, he was commissioned to do a poster for the 52nd annual Grammys, and he has also released a limited run wallpaper print.
Fairey is very opinionated in the art he produces, he produces a lot of propaganda towards the government that clearly shows he stands with the democratic party and stands against the Republicans. Recently he has released a collection of posters that can be downloaded and printed by anyone to use in protest against the government he has released 2 posters for the students and Americans who are protesting that gun control be put in place, when trump was elected he released a series of posters of non-Caucasian women with the phrase “we the people”, he says he had created them in support of the 3 minority’s that had been the most harassed by trump, to “make sure people remember ‘we the people’ means everyone”. In 2004 Fairey did a collection of artwork for anti-war-Iraq and anti-George W. Bush who was running to be reflected for president, but it was unsuccessful in swaying the nation's votes as Bush took the Presidency, it caused him to lose 25% of his fan base. In 2008, Fairey second daughter was on the way and he was thinking about his children’s future and how he wanted it to be, he decided to take a different approach to his propaganda and instead of showcasing the pissed of rebellion he came out with a series of positive prints featuring the Republican's opponent, Obama. His piece ended up being part of Obamas campaign and played a large roll in the victory.
I do not believe that Fairey’s art has influenced my perspective on social issues because I already felt as though my perspective of social issues Is fairly similar to his.
I chose to study Shepard Fairey and recreate one of his pieces because I like the messages he sends through his pieces and how clean and sharp all his pieces are, the way he uses defined lines and very blood colours. Typically, he uses his signature red alongside a cream colour, black and sometimes he adds in other bold colours usually from the primary or secondary colour wheel. When I do my own art I like to work with crisp and sharp lines as well as colours that pop out on each other.