You are more likely to be familiar with his artwork rather than his name, but Shepard Fairey’s pieces are famous all over the world.
Shepard is popular in the world of art for his contemporary works as a graphics designer, as he’s the face behind President Obama’s often imitated but never duplicated HOPE painting.
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Now, he has created another work of art that represents the Occupy Wall Street movement and during a series of letters, Shepard and an OWS organizer discuss the new face of HOPE.
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Instead of Obama’s face being drawn above the word HOPE, there is a depiction of a man wearing the infamous Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta.
As he told an OWS organizer in a series of conversational letters-
“This image represents my support for the Occupy movement, a grassroots movement spawned to stand up against corruption, imbalance of power, and failure of our democracy to represent and help average Americans.”
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On Shepard’s website Obey he posts the dissent of an Occupy organizer regarding his latest artwork. The organizer, who chose to remain anonymous, main concern is over the partisanship that can be exemplified in Shapard’s artwork which is an Obama original. The organizer said:
“…I myself and several other organizers cannot in any way be connected to this design. The 99 percent movement is wholly non-partisan and we have been repeatedly attacked as being a front for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Our movement is about uniting people, from all different walks of life and all different political viewpoints, against the global financial elite who have bought control of our government through campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door.”
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Do you think the organizer is being fair to Shepard? The style of the design does stem from Obama’s hope graphic but that’s simply a style.
Hope is not something exclusive to the Obama campaign. It is something that we all seek in times of trouble and right now with violence growing in the Occupy Movement and the number of critics growing, we most certainly do need hope and for that, I appreciate what Shepard has done.
For their entire exchange click over to owsnews.org and take a look at some of Fairey collections in the accompanying gallery.
