Shepard Fairey Takes Over Detroit!

If you have been downtown the last few days you probably noticed a huge mural being painted on the face of One Campus Martius. This 184 X 60 foot mural is the work of graffiti artist Shepard Fairey, the man behind OBEY.

Mr. Fairey rose to fame in 2009 when he released the Barack Obama "Hope" poster, but he was well known in the underground skating scene as early as the late 80s. He released a series of Andrew the Giant stickers while he was still in college and quickly established himself on the underground art scene. He started by painting buildings in the middle of the night, but these days his collections are being shown in places like The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

This mural will further establish Detroit as the art mecca that it has become over the last 15 years. Shepard will also be painting a mural inside the Z Parking Garage (which he already started when it was raining too much for him to work outside) and he will be creating five other works that will be installed in The Belt. In addition to the new pieces, he will be opening a show at the Library Street Collective called Printed Matters. This show will run from May 22nd till August 15th. The Library Collective is located at 1260 Library Street in Detroit.

The Mural as of Monday Afternoon

Photo by: Robbin Yelverton

~S