Shepard Fairey

I went to “A Conversation with Shepard Fairey” about a month ago too but forgot to make a post about it. Luckily, I took a whopping 13 pages of mini-sketchbook sized notes during the actual event.

First off, the person who interviewed Shepard Fairey was a straight up noob, and asked some really stupid questions. The interviewer was one of the head faculty members of the Communication department but she was absolutely ________! The conversation managed to be interesting nonetheless.

Fairey started off by sharing his story of how his Obey campaign began. He said that it started off as something silly – an inside joke, but developed into something much more. He printed thousands of stickers of the Obey giant and put them everywhere because he was fascinated with repetition and was obsessed with building something out of nothing and making people question it. He said “People are used to seeing advertising, but when they see something else, they want to get to the bottom of it.”

The most interesting part of the conversation was Fairey’s discussion of intellectual property (and his Obama poster), but since someone else already posted about it (and hit the nail on the head), I’m just going to skip right over it.

The second most interesting part the conversation to me, was Fairey’s discussion on capitalism. As most of you probably know, Shepard Fairey owns a clothing line called Obey, and receives a lot of criticism for it from the art community, street art community, etc. Fairey argues that he uses his Obey stickers and messages to comment on capitalism, while other corporations (ie. clothes companies) use it to fuel capitalism and to sell more product. He admits however, that his clothing line also helps to spread his messages and allows him to make a living doing what he wants to do. As a business major, and possibly an art minor, I think it’s kind of cool that he owns a business and gets to design and do whatever he wants to do too. Maybe I’ll be able to do what he does one day too.

Someone from the audience asked Fairey how he felt about hipsters who wear his brand. Fairey said that he knows that hipsters wear his brand and that “80% of the people who buy (his) shit, buy It because it looks nice or as a status symbol” but that also leaves 20% of the people who buy his clothing that do understand the message. “Everyone wants to be cool, but once it rubs off, hopefully the message will settle.” – Shepard Fairey, what a down to earth guy.

I actually own some of his clothing. I don’t really see his clothing as high end or political though, I just buy his clothing because they’re well designed, fit well, and are actually much more comfortable than your typical tee.

Anyway, another interesting topic of discussion was Fairey’s stance on public space. He argued that since we’re all tax payers, we all own a part of public property. Why should people who have money, be the only ones able to use this space to advertise and generate even more money? He sees public space as one of the few platforms left that people can use to inspire reaction publicly. At the same time, Fairey says he respects private property (though I don’t know how much I actually believe this).

Finally, Fairey brought up one of his ex-interns named Phil Lumbang who stencils “happy bears” around LA in broad daylight. I’ve actually been following this dude for a while now and snapped this picture of one of his “happy bears” while driving by: