ST buddy SHEPARD FAIREY has teamed up with his STUDIO NUMBER ONE (creaters of the “Hope For Haiti” CD cover) designers CLEON PETERSON and CASEY RYDER to create a new poster for HAITI relief based on a photo by TAO RUSPOLI. The $50 signed and numbered edition goes on sale at an unannounced time on Friday, February 5th at Obeygiant.com, with all proceeds from the sales going to ARTISTS FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE:

“Artists for Peace and Justice (APJ), established in early 2009, is a fundraising effort founded by Paul Haggis and friends that encourages peace and social justice and addresses issues of poverty and enfranchisement in communities around the world. Over the past year, APJ has directed its efforts to raising enough funds to fully sponsor three schools in Haiti in support of the initiatives of Father Rick Frechette and his team. These schools aren’t just a place to learn but provide for a hot meal, clean water and a chance at the future to children who desperately need it. Following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, APJ has focused its efforts on raising much needed dollars for emergency aid in the ravaged country that is only a few hours from our shores.”

Supertouch buddy LANCE ARMSTRONG has added his custom SHEPARD FAIREY-designed TREK Madone cycle into rotation as he rides in the 100th edition of the legendary GIRO D’ITALIA race in support of teammate LEVI LEIPHEIMER. With a matching Shepard Fairey-designed brain bucket to boot, Lance is sporting a coordinated ensemble that even Bruno would give an enthusiastic “Ach ja.”

*Watch live feed of the Giro daily HERE…

As if LANCE ARMSTRONG’s Supertouch-curated custom SHEPARD FAIREY-designed TREK MADONE road cycle wasn’t enough to snap necks at this month’s GIRO D’ITALIA race, helmet company GIRO has just created a matching lid to up the ante. Incorporating swaths of graphics from Shep’s race bike the helmet might just see the light of day on store shelves as an incredibly limited-edition run with proceeds from sales going to benefit LIVESTRONG. Keep an eye on ST for more updates in the coming week, including the chance to win one of the coveted brain buckets…

Where your brain could end up without one of these lids…

Creating SHEPARD FAIREY’s new TREK MADONE racing cycle for LANCE ARMSTRONG’s run in this month’s GIRO D’ITALIA was no easy task. Luckily, Trek artist SHANE SIEDSCHLAG is nice with a blade and a decal sheet…

When pressed about Shep’s new bike in Rome today, Lance told an AP reporter: “I’m a fan of his artwork. I collect his artwork. The bike that he did for this race I think is pretty stunning.”

Here we have the very first sneek peek at LANCE ARMSTRONG’s newly completed Supertouch-curated TREK art bikes for his run in the upcoming GIRO d’ITALIA by artists SHEPARD FAIREY and KENNY SCHARF. The world’s most prestigious cycling stage race after the legendary Tour de France, the Giro is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2009, coincidentally the first year Lance has ever entered the race. Lending their formidable creative talents to the challenge, Shepard and Kenny created two vastly different and utterly unique cycles to draw attention to Lance’s upcoming NIKE-backed “STAGES” anti-cancer art show benefiting LIVESTRONG that will debut on July 16th in Paris at GALERIE EMMANUEL PERROTIN during the TDF. Getting up on Lance’s “daily driver” Trek Madone road bike, Shepard Fairey created a vibrant homage to Lance’s cancer fighting foundation while including ancient patterning in homage of Italy’s rich architectural details. NYC Pop Art legend Kenny Scharf took a totally different approach to Lance’s Trek TTX time trial cycle and created the “lightspeed” space bike that will hopefully hurtle Tex across the finish line in record time. Both bikes will be auctioned off on October 2nd (10/2 marks the date of Lance’s original cancer diagnosis) at the NYC stop of the “Stages” art tour with all proceeds going to benefit Livestrong. Look for detailed official photos of both bikes here on ST in the next few days. Meanwhile, ENJOY THE PEEK: Read the rest of this entry »

It was only a matter of time, Supertouch’s own SHEPARD FAIREY’s iconic OBAMA campaign artwork finally made its way to SOUTH PARK last nite where the Big O received the typical Matt & Tre makeover on the season’s latest episode. Watch it HERE…

BOSTON VANDALISM CHARGES STIR DEBATE ON ART’S PLACE

By Abby Goodnough, NYTimes

BOSTON — This may be the only place in America where Shepard Fairey, the street artist whose omnipresent portrait of Barack Obama has become a touchstone, is not fully feeling the love.

Mr. Fairey’s court appearances came a month after he was arrested on Feb. 6 as he arrived at the opening-night party for his retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art. His cab was approaching the museum when the police stopped it, handcuffed him and took him to jail overnight. Click HERE to continue reading…

A wise man once said “writing about art is like dancing about architecture,” but in a world where oceans of self-aggrandizing “artspeak” usually says much about an author’s ego and little to nothing about artwork itself, Supertouch’s own resident legendary art writer CARLO McCORMICK is the exception to the rule. This month finds him penning an incredibly astute piece on SHEPARD FAIREY for ART IN AMERICA from the rarified perspective of a genuinely street-level art world insider more at home on the Bowery than in Chelsea. At a time when the slow-moving mainstream art world and its legion of stiff-jointed scribes are playing years of painful catch-up on the “street art” game, this is a must-read:

SHEPARD FAIREY
By Carlo McCormick | Art in America

In a thank-you note written by Barack Obama to street artist Shepard Fairey for the pictorial provocateur’s singular contribution to branding his campaign for the presidency, the then senator wrote: “The political messages involved in your work have encouraged Americans to believe that they can help change the status-quo. Your images have a profound effect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign.”

High praise indeed from such a highly regarded public figure. But what it ultimately says—that there is a cultural equivalence between fine art shown in established venues and artistic expressions put up illegally on private or government property—represents a tacit sanction of street art from the leader of the free world that is a dramatic shift in the perceived role of art as a radical tool of social intervention.

Emblazoned in our collective mind’s eye as a defining icon of optimism and change, Fairey’s Obama Hope poster, certainly one of his most endearing and personable images, is such a signature work that the original collage was recently acquired by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and related images graced the covers of Time and Esquire. It is, however, not a fleeting pop-culture sensation but simply the latest crossover hit in a long line of underground classics.

Fairey has made such an indelible mark on our visual landscape that it is difficult to avoid the platitudes we might otherwise eschew in the discourse of contemporary art. As he comes under greater scrutiny from the art establishment with a major retrospective of his work, now on view at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, it is worth noting that his renown has grown organically from the streets and a global youth culture that the mainstream art world has only a vague grasp of. Click HERE to continue reading…