Someone needs to put him on a leash!

Not only is his image everywhere, OBEY or OBAMA, but now so is his face. With that, Shepard Fairey's success is remarkable. It is utterly, the mainstream embracing that which was underground, or street, and literally that which is plastered upon the streets.

My resistance to Fairey's popularity is the same felt when your favorite local talent decides to appeal to a broader audience, like you're not enough. For years, I have seen his OBEY image in local gallery's or on SF buildings. You mos def felt apart of his movement when you saw the OBEY face on Van Ness or high on a building. His images are flashy and marketable, and that has always been the root to my resistance, they're too marketable. Was he producing art? or was he laying the groundwork for his current success? If you thought of the former, not considering the latter, I'd assume you're feeling like an ass right about now. But he has in fact been compared to Coca Cola, and his guerrilla art movement is nothing more than promoting the "Shepard Fairey" Brand. (Read more on this here)

RON ENGLISH posing in front of his art, with a dot over his face. LA, CA.

If you look at other street artists that produce guerilla art, they often choose not to show their face, at least not at first. BANKSY being one, Ron English being the other. Its part of the game, I thought, but Shepard just puts it all out there, and he's laughing all the way to the bank.

BANKSY

This all brings me to the Charlie Rose interview that I stumbled upon. What? OBEY is on Charlie Rose? This is ridiculous. I have to give props to Rose while he sits through Fairey tooting his own horn. The very end is so classic, after 15 minutes of Fairey telling the same story of how he's saving the world with this Obama image, a story that seems to evolve, Rose quickly ends the interview with a thank you and good night. I'm sure he's hoping its forever.