“I Got a Crush… on Obama’s Poster”
Okay, so Shepard Fairey is the last artist to need more exposure and these Obama silkscreen posters have already made the blog rounds but I think they justify a post on Printeresting. Fairey’s Obama Progress poster (36″x 24″) was produced in an edition of 350 and sold out from his website before being released back in January. The Hope version of the poster (pictured above) was delivered directly to the Obama campaign for distribution. Fairey’s website has posted a thank you letter from Barack himself (one that seems to condone putting stickers on stop signs- could this be the next non-issue in the battle for the presidency?).
More recently, the poster has led to a sticker campaign (a la Obey). On April 10th the Obama website announced the release of the Hope stickers available for purchase through Stickerobot. Gee, I can’t imagine why Obama is getting the youth vote.
On a less topical note, it’s interesting to me that Shepard Fairey who is so famous as a guerilla street artist may be the closest thing we have to a mainstream printmaker.
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Michael Shaw from BAGnewsNotes wrote about a lousy right-wing parody of these posters at the Huffington Post. It’s interesting to note the hackish quality of the parody when compared to Fairey’s design. Especially considering the guff Fairey takes as a rip-off artist (which he of course is). Just goes to show: it’s not as easy to cop a style as people think.
It’s also worth seeing this somewhat-terrible Obama print by the Date Farmers, and also poking around for various home-made Obama t-shirts, posters, etc. There may be enough material out there for an ongoing series. Obamatrix.