On the second floor of the 12 story faded green, 1931 art deco structure known as the Pellesier Building, in plain view of each of the letters of the world’s most famous sign, located in the heart of Sam Spade’s Los Angeles, is the home of an art enterprise known as Obey/Giant. On the street, bright sunlight casts dark shadows, moving promise just beyond reach, onto the next block, onto the next house, the next room, the next person.
In the sparsely decorated lobby is a stylish brown leather chair and matching sofa. BMX, skateboard, lifestyle and art publications are neatly stowed beneath a glass coffee table. Half a dozen or so oversized punk and rap cassettes are framed beneath glass, enhancing the few wall decorations. The muted sound of street traffic harmonizes with laughter and shipping news, while three or four artistic looking 20-somethings weave in and out of my field of vision, stopping, one at a time, to offer me something to drink.
    These are either aspiring artists seeking discovery, or kids from New York, Chicago, Little Rock or Dallas stoked as howdy to be where they can skate and party and surf the ‘bu on weekends, ten to a two bedroom roach motel, warmed on the fringes of the promise and the glow of that ever present Santa Monica sunshine. I imagine that they are similar in many ways to the man that I am here to see. I wouldn’t think that their political or philosophical views or their frump ‘n’ wear style would drift too far from that of the founder. But they are unlike him in at least one big way—He has moved beyond the fringes and directly into the light of celebrity.
You may not know his name, but it would be safe to say that as many young adults, maybe more, recognize his work as Picasso’s. In big cities throughout the world, on concrete slabs and on power boxes, wallpapering boarded up tenements are images like that of Andre the Giant, along with the words Obey/Giant. Yeah, he’s that guy and his name is Shepard Fairey and he made that stuff just for you.
    Southern California just rolled out of the wettest, coldest February in years and now, only one week later, it’s 90-plus and holding. It’s what the LAPD used to called “riot weather,” heat, but the wrong type of heat, the type that causes me to think that our planet is ill and that somewhere far away melting glaciers are about to turn all that I see into water world. It’s the kind of heat that makes me think that there’s a kickback coming for not helping the rest of the country to shovel out of the snow. The cracks on the cement floor beneath my feet remind me that we are in earthquake country.
    A boy walks up to me with an extended hand, wearing a Delicious Vinyl T-shirt and jeans, smiling. Once again I am poised to decline the offer of a soda, but the extended appendage really is the hand of the giant. I shake that talented hand and follow it and the attached body known as Shepard Fairey to his office, a broom closet of an enclosure, filled with tidy clutter, a computer screen, toys and knickknacks. Colorful, mostly oversized books go all the way to the ceiling, covering all four walls. It looks more like a kid’s bedroom, than a business office.
Shepard makes me feel comfortable with talk of mutual friends and art and I am enjoying the peaceful vibe being created. Then, realizing that peaceful vibes are the enemy of a good interview, I ruin everything with my first of several questions.

Risen Magazine: Do you ever get carded when you go to buy alcohol?
Shepard Fairey: Yeah, I still look pretty young.

RM: I understand that you were hired to do art for The Passion of The Christ?
SF: I went to Icon in Santa Monica and saw the film and thought that it was really powerful. Whether you’re Christian or not I think that it’s important to empathize. Anyone who’s been subjected to persecution unfairly would relate to the film and feel that they could put themselves in the other person’s shoes. So, I did some work for it, and they said that they were really happy with the work. They kept saying that they were going to fax back the purchase order and the signed contract. I started work on the project right before Christmas. I went home and I was getting calls, including calls on Christmas Eve (quite ironic I thought) saying that I absolutely had to get concepts to them that day, which I did.
    A couple of weeks later, I still hadn’t heard back. Then I got a call saying, “Yeah man, we got some bad news; we just found out that time’s short and we won’t be able to implement that stuff, so we’re not going to use it.” I said, “Yeah, that is too bad, because you guys are still going to have to pay for it, at least half of it, a kill fee.” He said, “What are you talking about, that work was on spec!” I said, “It wasn’t on spec, I work for huge companies and just because I was down with this project philosophically doesn’t mean that I was doing it on spec. Are you waving your fee?” After that he wouldn’t return calls. Still, I think that the film is really great—It’s painful to watch and some people can’t get past that, but I think that it’s a film that everyone should see…Now that I got that out of the way. [Laughter]

RM: Einstein thought that ideas came from outside of him; where do you think that ideas come from?
SF: [Exhales slowly] Ideas, I think it’s a mixture to me. Things that I don’t have a real conscious awareness of are affecting me nonetheless. A lot of times when I go to bed or when I’m in the shower, when I’m daydreaming, things click. Other times it’s a direct result of something I’ve seen. I see something on the news, or a poster on the street or a magazine. I hear about someone who has a website that got raided by the FBI for telling you how to make a Molotov cocktail and they’re arrested for being terrorists. Stuff like that—It’s very multifaceted. I can’t say that it’s one thing over another. I love books, I look at a lot of art, a lot of things that have been made into art or books. You mix things that have been done or put them into a new context and it becomes a whole new thing. I’m very open to the idea that there can be things that haven’t been done and present them in a fresh new light. I don’t know where it all comes from.

RM: In a sense the creative process requires the unlikely combination of humility and ego.
SF: [Laughter] I totally agree with you. The Obey/Giant project that I’ve been doing for almost 15 years now, started off as a whimsical inside joke, and it got some reactions that I hadn’t expected, the feedback that people gave me directly and indirectly. It’s always been an exchange—I don’t have any delusions that I’m a brilliant guy who came up with something super original. Part of what inspires me is that you can be fairly average and still inspire people with a good model or a good template of empowerment. It wasn’t the Picasso’s or the Michelangelo’s of the world that got me going—it was actually punk rock fliers and things like that—things that were obviously homemade, but still had a graphic sensibility and a charm that didn’t seem out of reach; it seemed accessible. Once you get the confidence to start putting stuff out there and letting people see it, it gets easier and easier to do.

RM: What you are doing goes back at least as far as Andy Warhol.
SF: Warhol was an inspiration to me—he took art from being something of a highbrow, elitist thing to using images that resonated with the average person. I still think that it existed in a kind of high-society world, but his work with the Velvet Underground, those guys were pretty gritty and appealed to the Greenwich Village type crowd. I’m a populist; accessibility is really important to me. I don’t make a huge distinction between art that goes on T-shirts and a canvas that goes in galleries—I think that’s the difference between me and older pop artists. There’s been a shift in people’s acceptance of that; I don’t think they were ready for that in Warhol’s time.

RM: A Campbell’s Soup label had an amazing life—going from a practical thing that was used to sell soup, becoming a piece of art that is sold on its own, then becoming a commercial product again.
SF: It’s pretty fascinating.

RM: Stanley Marsh, who did the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, put a bunch of “Yield” signs all over the county. One of them says “Road Never Ends.” When you see them, you just don’t know what to think.
SF: The idea of playing with the symbolism of what people are used to seeing—that’s part of the strategy to my project, putting things out there that people are conditioned to interpret in a certain way, having them designed to question the way that you interpret that, so that you don’t cruise through life on autopilot and always assume that this is a negative, this is a positive. I guess “question everything” is my philosophy. And try to keep a sense of humor at the same time. [Laughter]

RM: Is cutting up a cow and putting it in Plexiglas, art?
SF: I think that some art is purely for shock value, and there really isn’t anything to it beyond that. Even the stuff that I do that’s designed to jar people a little bit, I think that the underlying message is really positive. Some stuff, like somebody throwing paint in front of an airplane turbine, getting it to go on canvas in a certain way. Maybe some people think that’s art and that it’s meaningful. I like stuff that, even if it has a latitude of interpretation, it actually communicates something, gets people to feel something, but that’s all very subjective.

RM: Sometimes the art of the scam is the art itself.
SF: That’s got its place I guess. [Laughter]

RM: Do you believe that there is good and bad art, or is it strictly in the eye of the beholder?
SF: Well, I think that everything is in the eye of the beholder, but there are some things that I see being called art, that to me are kind of something that you would keep within your bedroom, like some of the erotic stuff that I see. I’m not a prude at all; I don’t have a problem with the naked human form, but to me it seems that somebody is getting their titillation, getting their kicks out of this type of work—like it’s some kind of sexual outlet for them. They feel that they can be more open about it, and disbelief will be suspended if they call it art. I’m married and that sort of interaction with my wife is my business, and nobody else’s. So, I have my opinions, but it doesn’t mean they’re right. I try to encourage a debate rather than to tell people what’s good or bad.
    Here and there I’ll do some stuff that has a slant to it, an opinion to it. I’m not happy about the war in Iraq while there’s decreased funding in public schools. To me that’s backwards, but not everyone agrees. I think that our nation will decline more from dumbing down the population than having some Iraqis come over with bombs or knives or whatever they’re going to do. Statistically, you’re more likely to get struck by lightning than die from terrorism. Maybe Bush could figure out a way to pin lightening on Osama and Saddam. [Laughter]

RM: Have you ever been a starving artist?
SF: Oh yeah, from the time I got out of college to the time I was 26, I was making so little money every year that I didn’t even have to pay taxes. In fact I was $30,000 in debt when I first moved to San Diego. I was trying to run my own screen-printing business and make my own art at the same time, and also spread my project grass roots. I figured that anyone who was willing to help me deserved to get free materials. So, I was just sending out more materials than the money that the company was generating. [Laughter] Sacrificing for my art, I guess. I felt that in the long term it would bear fruit financially. Finally by ’98 or ’99 I got all of my credit card bills paid off. Whew! My credit was bad for a while. I guess my advice to anyone who’s trying to make it as an artist, is maybe to shift gears and have a regular job a little bit, don’t give up on your art, try to make time to do it. If you love it, it’s probably going to be the thing that you’re best at. Somehow that comes through to people. When I make stuff that I’m really happy with, somehow it seems to translate to the viewer. That’s the best feeling.

RM: Have you ever had a job outside of the art world?
SF: I was a production manager for my friend’s clothing company and I worked in a skate shop. You know, I’ve done stuff, but it was always at least partially in my field of interest