ONE SMALL SEED MAGAZINE Issue #27 Digital 02 | Page 11

‘Everything that I do came from
skateboarding, and at first punk rock,
and then later hip hop because hip hop
became the new punk rock... Punk rock
and skateboarding were always about
creativity, resourcefulness, rebellion and
then hip hop came along and it was the
same way.’ (Fairey)
Shepard Fairey first started propagating
his art onto skateboards and t-shirts in
1984. These seeds soon germinated and
multiplied a few years later in 1989 with his
OBEY sticker campaign known as Andre
has a Giant Posse. The image of Andre the
Giant, the wrestler, started as an in-joke in the
hip-hop and skater community because –
according to Fairey – ‘the sticker has no
meaning but exists only to cause people
to react, to contemplate and search for
meaning in the sticker’. Followers soon
caught on, and the hype spread and
people started sharing, plastering and
collecting stickers as mementos.
In the 2008 U.S. Elections Fairey produced
his Obama Hope posters, which were
rejected by the Obama Campaign – they
declined any affiliation to the posters
saying they were ‘perpetuated illegally’.
However, revered art critic for The New
Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl, dubbed the
posters as the 'most efficacious American
political illustration since Uncle Sam Wants
You.'

‘SKATEBOARDING,
PUNK ROCK,
GRAFFITI AND HIP
HOP – THOSE ARE
THE ESSENTIALS
FOR ME.’
Those who dismissed Fairey’s posters as an
extension of him ‘augmenting [his] existing
brand of pissed-off rebellion’ (in his own
words!), were wrong. Hope was actually
created out of a desire to show his support
for Obama, and to secure a brighter future
for his daughters.
Empowering people to look at moving
forward instead of backwards is what
Fairey continues to cultivate. He shares his
favourite quote from Joe Strummer’s (The
Clash) The Future is Unwritten: ‘I'd like to say
that people can change 
anything they
want to.’ Although his roots might be on US
soil, his humble but fierce determination to
spread his message to Rise Above reaches
surfaces and cities across the world. And
aligning himself with brands that respect
his art – and his message – remains vital:
‘I’m very cautious about which brands I’ll
work with, earlier in my career I needed to
just survive so I couldn’t be picky. I’m in the
luxurious position of being able to be very
choosy about who I work with’. (Fairey)
The collaboration between Hennessy
and Shepard Fairey has everything to
do with their shared values: the never
ending quest for excellence, the love
of true craftsmanship, the cultivation of
consistency, the passion for tradition
and innovation. ‘There is a philosophical
connection between the way I work and
the way that Hennessy works as a brand,’
he says about the many parallels that
could be drawn between his art and
Hennessy’s craft.