A Shepard Fairey Interview From The Archives of Matt Obert
[This article appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006]
This interview was originally intended for publication in the NicePaper in August 1995. Unfortunately, there were no issues in August: the last issue of that publication came out in July of that year. Perhaps this conversation would have been lost forever, had I not been invited by Helen Stickler and James Brayton Hall to create a little zine for an art opening at RISD's Woods-Gerry Gallery in 1997. The show, entitled Post No Bills, featured Shepard‘s work alongside that of Fort Thunder folks like Brian Ralph, Mat Brinkman and Brian Chippendale, plus future Dirt Palace co-founder Xander Marro, Ken Linehan of Rebuilt Hangar Theory, Brown professor Paul Badger, future lotsofnoise.com impresario Ryan Lesser, zinester Steve Whirly, Eric Goepfert, Sarah Rentz, Hidden Agenda, Jim Draper, members of Les Savy Fav, and even some of my own posters. Only 64 copies of the original pressing were made, with a hand-screened cover printed on some weird blotter paper I'd dumpstered—so I jumped at the chance to reprint this interview in The Agenda. For those of you who've been living under a rock for the past fifteen years, the “Giant” phenomenon is an experiment in Phenomenology which originated in Providence in the early 1990s. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as “the process of letting things manifest themselves.” Shepard elaborates on this: “The first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment. The Andre the Giant sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings.” In the summer of 1989, Shep made the first Andre sticker: a stenciled black-and-white face with crude handwriting reading, “Andre the Giant has a posse - 7'4", 520 lbs.” Now the image can be found around the world. You've probably seen one on a stop sign or lamppost, or in an airport bathroom. As soon as you know what to look for, you'll recognize the image in lots of unexpected places. The sticker itself came from teaching a friend how to silkscreen: Shep picked Andre's image out of a newspaper to use as an example for learning color separation. The rest was an inside joke about skateboarding culture—specifically about the type of people who want to join “a posse.” The project gained momentum and media attention when, during an election season, Fairey pasted Andre's image on one of Buddy Cianci's campaign billboards; at that point, a phenomenon was born. Repeated encounters with the archetypal Giant image soon spread via word-of-mouth and hand-to-hand distribution, until the Andre icon could be seen in London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Barcelona and beyond. Eventually, “Giant” became a brand, which spun off into a skate-gear empire specializing in silk-screened t-shirts and custom decks—but this interview is from the early days, when Shep still pulled every screen by hand in his Olneyville studio. My questions will be italicized. Shep: The Extreme Games were in town, and ESPN was filming it for national TV, so I saw that as a great opportunity to get exposure for Andre. I went down there first with really big stencils, and stenciled the [street luge] course [on Angell Street], thinking they would be filming it from above with helicopters. There were guards there, in a golf cart that was driving around the course—but I was careful about it, and I did it in places where I didn't think they could see me. I'd paint one color, and then the golf cart would drive around, and then I'd paint the other color when they had passed where I was. So I did a bunch of big stencils and didn't get caught—but when I watched it on TV a little bit, they weren't filming from above at all, so I figured I would go back and put some big stickers up. I went back two nights later with some big stickers. I had a stencil, too—but I hadn't done any spray-painting yet that night. I put a big sticker up on a pole, and RISD security came down. I guess one of the people from ESPN saw me or something. They asked me what I was doing, and I told them, and they called the Providence Police. Soon, there were six cop cars and a golf cart—to arrest me for putting a sticker up. It was pretty funny. RISD security asked me if I had any ID, and I pulled it out. When they saw who I was, they started freaking out. They were so excited because they'd heard about me, but they weren't working for the school yet when I did the Cianci billboard. They were like, “All right! Shep Fairey! We got him!” So that was the highlight of the night for me. Then, I went to jail. They cuffed me and threw me in a cop car. There were KIX 106 [now HOT 106] stickers all over every pole, and I said, “Well, why aren't you going after them? I just figured it was all right, since KIX 106 has their stickers all over everything.” And they were like, “They're a real corporation. And you aren't.” So, like, whatever ... Matt: So I guess what they're saying is, “Corporations are above the law.” Yeah. And the cops were total dicks. They were just harassing me: “Did you have anything to drink tonight?” And when I said no, they were like, “Don't lie to me!” So I guess what they're saying is, “Corporations are above the law.”[laughter] I was like, “Smell my breath! Breathalyze me!” They were just trying to be intimidating for no reason. They asked me if I had any weapons on me, and I was like, “No, I don't have any weapons on me.” So they emptied my pockets, and they found my insulin and my syringe—you know, I'm diabetic. And they were like, “Why did you lie? I thought you said you didn't have any weapons on you!” I didn't consider that a weapon, you know? Then they were like, “How do we know you're a real diabetic? How are you going to prove it? Do you have a Medic Alert tag, or a card, or something?” And when I said no, they said, “You're required by law to have that stuff!” And that's total bullshit. If you were, I would have one, because my dad is the head of the Diabetic Treatment Center for South Carolina. If that were a law, he would definitely know. Then they took me to jail. It was disgusting. I'd never been to jail before, until then. It's like a steel bed, with no pillow or anything. It smells like bleach. A toilet with no seat. No toilet paper. Because you might make a toilet paper noose and hang yourself. Yeah, I guess. I spent the night in there, and in the morning they took me to court. I was shackled to a guy who was a wife-beater. Then I went to my two minute long trial. They brought in a Polaroid of the sticker, and they were like, “What's the charge?” The officer said, “Malicious destruction of public property. He was stenciling stickers on poles.” [laughter] They were like, “What do you mean? Was he spray-painting?” And the officer was like, “He was using, to spray-paint a sticker, or something ...” And I said, “No, it was just a sticker.” That's how stupid they are. So the judge smirked when she looked at the Polaroid of this Andre sticker on the pole, and she asked me, “How do you plead?” And I said, “Guilty.” And she goes, “Okay! Fifty hours of community service, and pay the court fine of $83.50, and you can go. Come back and see me in a month with your proof of having done your hours, and if you keep your nose out of trouble, this will be dropped from your record in a year. But you get in trouble, and it's there permanently.” So it was pretty stupid, and I walked home. You know, they were standing about ten feet from a five-foot stencil the whole time. In fact, I think a cop car had one of its wheels parked on it. But they didn't say anything about that. But you can imagine—I mean, look what happened to WizArt. Of course, he was a repeat offender—he had been busted several times, I don't know how many. So now I've got to be really careful. It's strange that Cianci can pay lip service to supporting public art in Providence, but then make such a media issue out of his war on graffiti—and all the posters where he's holding a can of spraypaint, urging people to turn in graffiti artists by calling “1-800-TAGGERS.” It's like this weird double standard, like your art is valid if you have a grant from RISCA, but not if you're from South Providence and you paint amazing murals. I think cops have more important things to worry about. It's like what happened to art and architecture in the Third Reich. People's environments are a way to soothe them when other elements [of society] are not so soothing. I think that's [Cianci's] plan for downtown Providence: to make an area that a lot of people travel through look nicer to cover up the fact that a lot of the surrounding areas are ugly and full of crime. But people are shallow, and I think they have that kind of immediate reaction to something being nice on the surface, and they don't question what's underneath as much. I don't really think graffiti is an eyesore, personally. I think [the anti-graffiti campaign] is a waste of the taxpayer's money. But people don't really question it. Having a law against graffiti, and enforcing it so strictly, doesn't make for less graffiti. It just makes graffiti uglier, because people do it in a hurry. Exactly. They don't spend time on a nice piece, they just do a quick tag and run for it, especially knowing that it's going to be cleaned off in a few days. Yeah! And that's what's ugly. A proliferation of just hack tags, and not as many murals, and not as many well-thought-out pieces like we used to have inside the old train tunnel. It doesn't discourage graffiti—it discourages artistic graffiti. Route 10 used to look nice on the way into downtown. There were pieces from the last ten years still up—the old-school styles mixed with the new—really colorful, and everything. And now it's just sandblasted concrete with a few ugly, scrawled tags. But, you know, when it's a city-endorsed graffiti piece—like all the Mafia bosses heading up [the exit ramp] to Atwells, with the one token Shawmut Indian taken straight from the bank billboard—well, then ... Yeah, but Shawmut Bank is a “real corporation!” Whoever's got the money gets to put up their public art… Helen [Stickler] had Cianci on tape saying “Graffiti is not art. It's vandalism. If you want to have your art in the public space, buy a billboard.” I don't see [Cianci] in jail. And then she showed all these Cianci stickers that were on abandoned houses, Cianci posters on abandoned houses. I don't see him in jail. [Ed: Remember, this was ten years ago. At any rate, that's not why he's in jail today.] Yeah, totally. The thing about public space is that nobody owns it. People shouldn't have to pay money to put up their own little signs. “Public” means the public owns it. If you're a taxpayer, you own your little percentage of it—and a billboard invades that space. Just because somebody paid for it doesn't mean you want it there. To have billboards in the public eye, the only fair thing is: if you're not allowed to put up something on your own, then nobody should be allowed, because that's de facto discrimination against people with less money. Special thanks to the AS220 Stinktank for help with the new intro to this piece, partially based on “Compost and the Arts” (www.as220.org/as220/weblog/news/compost.html) which I paraphrased without bothering to ask permission, since I co-wrote it in the first place.