Obey Experiment @ ICA Z-Trip, Chuck D., Shepard Fairey

The drive home from work on Friday evening sucked, clocking in at just a shade over 2 hours. That gave me about an hour and a half to turn it around and head back to Boston to the ICA for the 2nd try at the Obey Experiment. Shepard Fairey's show "Supply and Demand" is running for 2 more weeks at this point, thru Agust 16th. If you have not made it over there yet the show is not to be missed.

After going to the February gig that Shepard got arrested at I was asleep at the wheel for the makeup date and tickets were sold out by the time I came thru. Luckily the internet gods were smiling on me and I ended up with a sweet hookup! It actually ended up a joy having this event in July rather than February because the atmosphere on the deck out front on that water on a warm night protected from the drizzle by the structure of the ICA itself in a lounge type atmosphere couldn't be done in February! I think it was 12 degrees that night!

By the time I made my way down the the dancefloor Shepard was in full effect but before long Z-Trip took to the decks. He opened with The Dropkick Murphy's "Shipping Up To Boston" while layering and scratching news reports from the Gates incident over the track. "Police acting stupidly" The perfect homage to segue into after Shepard completed his set inside the building he was arrested in front of 4 short months ago.

From there it becomes a blur of my dancing legs and arms as I lose track of time and space and get absorbed by Z-Trip's beats for the next hour. It was as rocking and feel good set as you can have in a museum lobby. To close the night Public Enemy's Chuck D. took the stage and ripped thru a commanding 20 or so minutes backed by Z-Trip. Chuck D. looked in command and effortless on the mic on what so happened to be his 49th birthday.

All in all a great event and after going to the first one I was stoked that I was able to make it to the redux.

All photos courtesy of Ben Saren via Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bsaren/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Shepard Fairey Interview on CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning News aired an 8 minute piece on Shepard Fairey this morning complete with a sit down interview at the ICA in Boston and plenty of video inside the ICA.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Shepard Fairey Arrested In Boston Tonight

So Crystal and I were at the ICA tonight to see Shepard Fairey and Z-Trip man the decks at The Obey Experiment. Z-Trip took the stage first shortly after 10pm which I found a little strange because I figured he would be the closer, but I didn't pay it much mind since it was Shepard's show and started getting my dance on. Sometime around 11pm Z-Trip gets on the mic and announces that Shepard was arrested by Boston Police tonight so he won't be joining us. Menino let Shepard through a 25 foot Peace Goddess mural on the side of City Hall and the Boston PD picks him up on 2 warrants on his way into the party that kicks off his show at the ICA which will run in their fine city thru August.

I'm sure Boston PD will say they had to act tonight because Shepard was leaving town after this event or something like that. How lame. Interested to see what these warrants are for. At least Z-Trip didn't slow down and rocked the museum with a solo set for 3 solid hours! Link below to the Boston Globe article about the arrest.


Shepard Fairey Arrested

Z-Trip: Victory Lap The Obama Mix Part 2

Z-Trip has released a followup to the much hyped Obama Mix that was released around the DNC with "The Victory Lap" Obama Mix Part 2. Z-Trip blends his signature style here cutting and scratching soul and hip hop gems with Obama speeches as well as news clips from election night. It is a smooth and mellow mix that is uplifting and really echos the vibe that many people are feeling right now.

Well worth the download!

And while I'm at it StickerRobot has also released a limited number of metallic gold Shepard Fairey Obama stickers with the HISTORY tagline which were made specifically for the Manifest Hope show in DC. They are selling a small amount of stickers thru their website. I picked up a pack of 10 earlier today.


Victory Lap Obama Mix Part 2
Sticker Robot History Sticker

Obama TIME Person of The Year- Cover by Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey lands a TIME Magazine cover with a new image of Barack Obama for the TIME Person of The Year cover. The fact that Time chose Shepard to do a new Obama piece for their cover is a pretty cool way to wrap up all the Obama street art hysteria leading up to the inauguration.

Glad that Time gave the nod to Shepard and acknowledging how iconic his Obama images became during the campaign.


TIME Person of The Year

Obey Giant Boston Pics

Blah... The weekend is over once again and it went by much too fast as usual.

On Saturday Crystal and I went into Boston to try to snap pictures of as many of the Obey Giant installations as possible. After running around Boston we worked up quite an appetite so we stopped in Natick and had a late lunch/early dinner at PF Changs.

Today I just banged around the house for the most part, watched the Patriots, sat outside for a while and soaked up some of the last t-shirt only rays of the season.

This turned into a 4 dvd weekend at Redbox.

Run Fatboy Run
The Love Guru
The Visitor
Iron Man

I will now end the weekend with a little bit of Wii before bed.


My Obey Giant Boston Set

Shepard Fairey In Boston Video

Shepard Fairey Crushing Boston With Pasters!

After visiting DC last week it seems that Shepard Fairey and the Obey crew have landed in Boston to bomb the city streets with some sweet looking Obey propaganda. Pasters are up from Chinatown to Harvard Square and points in between.

I will have to get out there within the next few days after work for some picture taking, or perhaps a weekend drive is in order.

Thanks to Hargo on Flickr for snapping these great shots!


Obey In Boston

Vivi La Revolucion, Scored The New Obey Print

This week I was lucky enough to be one of the chosen hundreds who were able to break thru the sluggish and temperamental ObeyGiant servers to pick up this week's print Vivi La Revolucion.

Over the past few months there have been a handful of prints that I have tried from the times they were released until they were sold out a few hours later without being able to secure a print. There were a couple others that just dropped at a time that I was not around a computer and missed out on them all together. I think this is the first print I was able to purchase since the Vote! print. Speaking of Vote!, the rumor seems to be that Shepard will be releasing a new Obama Vote! imgae right before the election. Knowing how sought after all thing Obey and Obama related have become I will do my best to pick one up as well.

Buying prints direct from Obey Giant would certainly provide you a better investement than the stock market in 2008. I feel happier in this market buying an Obey print for $45 for artistic collection and investment purposes right now as opposed to 3 shares of Pfizer or Ebay or Home Depot. Obey Giant prints that were released in '08 pretty much all sell for at least 2x and sometimes 3x or more of thir value on ebay or other secondary markets with some of the Obama prints selling for thousands more than their initial sale price. I'll take those returns over the 30% decline you would get buying into the market this year. Plus I don't get hit with cap. gains tax after selling a print on ebay!

Obey Giant = Shut Out!!!

Woke up this morning to word that Obey Giant would be dropping the above print at a random time today. The print is titled Duality of Humanity II and is the first in a series of prints using American photojournalist Al Rockoff's photos as the source.

I missed out on last week's print which was one of the strongest images of the year so far, so I really wanted a chance to pick up this week's print. I asked Crystal if we could rearrange our plans for the day which included some kayaking in order to hang out and do things around the house in order to wait for the print to drop. The hope was that we could score one each, one for my collection and one that Crystal could score and sell on ebay for and have a few hundred bucks of profit to pay off some bills with. The print that came out last week dropped at 1PM EST, so we hoped that we wouldn't be spending all day hitting F5 on the keyboard.

We got a bunch of stuff done around the house, vac'd and washed the floors, cleaned the bathroom and rearranged a bit of furniture, still no print. Put the new DVD "21" into the player and watched that while refreshing every 5 minutes, still no print. Ran to Price Chopper super quick to bring back "21" and pick up "Step Up 2" and some ice cream and watch a couple innings of the Red Sox. Still nothing. Watched about 90% of Step Up 2 and right at 8PM, about 12 hours after I first checked the Obey website this morning the print was available.

The next hour and a half was filled with the usual Obey web frustrations, magnified by 2 since we were both trying for the print. Product pages that wouldn't load, connections that would time out, checkout links that would not work and failed Paypal connections. After about an hour and 20 minutes all 450 prints were sold and we were shut out and left with nothing.

Thank goodness Crystal takes it all so well as I know there are plenty of ladies out there who would not help or stand for there boyfriend spending a good portion of the day dedicating their time to get something that they consider to be nothing more than a glorified "poster".

On the bright side my Ron English Abraham Obama screenprint did show up this week and it looks super sweet in person. The detail is unreal, so all was not lost in the week of art.

Obey Inspired McCain NOPE Posters

Here's the best Obey Giant Obama HOPE poster knockoff that I have come across in the past month! These would make some great street pasters to go right alongside the Obama HOPE prints!

Love it!

Shepard Fairey Exhibition coming to the Boston ICA!!!

This made my day!

I surfed on over to the ICA website while at work today to see if anything interesting was coming down the pipe for spring. First I saw that there is a new exhibit called "Street Level" that just opened on March 19th that draws from graffiti and street art featuring artists Mark Bradford (Los Angeles), William Cordova (Lima, Miami, New York) and Robin Rhode (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Berlin). The slideshow and some of the imagery for that exhibit looked promising and worth a visit.

But then I clicked on over to the "upcoming exhibitions" page and was delighted in what I saw!! A Shepard Fairey exhibition running at the ICA from July 30th thru October 26th! Talk about awesome!!! It will be very cool to see what types of pieces are brought out from the vault for this exhibit!

Any Boston or Providence gallery shows as a tie in?? That would be sweet. The end of July is a long way off, but this gives me something to look forward to that should be very cool.


ICA Upcoming Exhibitions
Obey Giant

Obey Giant Obama Progress Posters @ Clark Clinton Rally

Talk about timing!

An Express Mail package from ObeyGiant arrived at my door at 11:30am today and Hillary Clinton was due to speak at Clark University just 4 or so blocks away at 12:30.

When I took the day off today a couple weeks back the idea behind it was the fact that I would be nursing a Super Sized hangover after a Patriots victory, but instead I had crow for breakfast and did what I could to make something positive out of the day. Heck, I moved to Worcester for reasons such as this... If a presidential candidate is going to be stumping just a brisk walk away from my doorway I would be ignorant not to go and show my face.

The liveblogging by the Worcester Magazine crew let me know that Hillary was running late and I had plenty of time when I headed out the door at noon. Upon arrival the line for admittance went from Kneller Aud. all the way down Downing St. to Main St. and the down Main St. to the main gates to Clark Campus. Since the line was so long at this point I took up a post at the Church on the corner of Gates St. and Main. Once they herded most of the people inside I went down Downing St. right in front of Kneller Auditorium and met up with the folks you see holding the signs. At this point a couple other Obama supporters came over our way as well as a reporter from the Fitchburg Sentinel who we chatted with for a while.

All of the crowd was inside by this point and I headed home as I had some errands to run. A trip to the Post Office later and the Daily Worcesteria blog tells me that Hillary is still running late and that she is on 290. i figured I would be doing more good going back to Clark and holding a sign outside the venue than sitting at home. So I marched back to Clark and arrived at the front doors just before Hillary began speaking.

I took up a nice spot on the top of a berm near a tree right at the main entrance to the auditorium. In my time holding the sign there I can certainly say that the under 25 vote was very vocal for their support for Obama and the sign was getting all kinds of shout outs from the crowd. A group of local school kids came over and started mugging for the camera while there friends took camera phone pics, a boyfriend and girlfriend couple came over and asked if they could take their picture with the poster. This went on for quite some time, the sign generating "whoops" from the crowd as well as some "Obama" chants. The college aged kids in the crowd were quite vocal in their support.

But I will also say there was a small but sizable contingent of older status quo Dem's, stately looking men in ties and sportcoats, who would give me a wry smile or a hidden thumbs up as they walked past me. It seems they felt that they had to be subdued in their support, but it makes me think that when they get behind the curtain tomorrow and are ready to make their vote that the can certainly be voting Obama as well.

Only two people really "yelled" at me. One older gentleman yelled, "You had your day, it's time for you to go home...." Another lady repeatedly yelled, "All hat, no cattle." Upon a bit of googling I have come to find out that the phrase applies to pretend cowboys that dress and talk the part, pretending to be what they are not.

I thought that is what we were dealing with in the White House now. Oh but that's right, he does like to clear brush.

All in all this was a very cool way for me to spend a scheduled day off. Much more interesting than being at work and really made me excited for tomorrow's election results in Mass and beyond.


Daily Worcesteria

Shepard Fairey Obama Print

Last week Obey Giant released the VOTE screenprint you see here. I was lucky enough to have some great timing and picked up a copy of the print with little trouble within 15 minutes of it appearing on the Obey Giant site earlier this week.

Today Shepard Fairey announced that the Obama print that is above will be available via obeygiant on Wednesday January 30th. The print is limited to 350 and will be sold out in the blink of an eye. The accompanying note from Shepard states that "Proceeds from this print go to produce prints for a large statewide poster campaign."

So it looks like Shepard will be hitting the streets with some pro Obama posters. Keep your eyes peeled!!


ObeyGiant Obama

Obey Giant "Peace Bomber" Craziness

I will preface this post by first stating that I have been a fan of Shepard Fairey's work ever since Andre The Giant and his Posse first started making the round in Providence RI in the mid 90's.

Around the same time that Shepard began the Andre The Giant Has a Posse sticker/bombing campaign I was hanging around Providence and the Thayer St. area around RISD and Brown University quite often. During these times you could not walk by a stop sign or electrical box without seeing a sticker designed by Shepard.

Shortly thereafter Shepard moved out west and founded BLK/MRKT then Studio Number One, while at the same time bombing streets worldwide, releasing quality prints week after week, launching Swindle magazine. Over the past couple years Shepard's profile has continued to rise putting on sold out gallery shows in the US and abroad.

Over the past few years I would look at Shepard's work quite often online and check out prints on ebay. However it was only within the past 6 months that I began buying prints. Since closing on the loft I now have a permanent place to show off artwork and not have to worry about the logistics of storing them, losing or destroying prints etc.

I've had moderate success buying the prints I liked in the past months. There was a print entitled Peace Bomber which was set to drop on the Obey Giant website yesterday at 12pm PST. As has been the ritual in the past weeks the Obey server locks up due to traffic just prior to the release and it is a dogfight in an attempt to get a print. In recent weeks prints have sold out in as quick as 30 minutes.

Well drop times comes and goes and the website is locked up, no one can access it due to traffic and such. I leave work and drive home, jump online, same deal. The site is still bogged down. It does not take a rocket scientist to come up with the URL for the prints since the Obey crew just adds a product number to the code in numerical order.

Last night I was up until after midnight copying and pasting and URL into my browser, crossing my fingers that it would be accepted and let me log into paypal. Chatting on Obey Giant forums every once in a while someone was able to secure their print and would post their confirmation #. Everyone kept on trying. I went to bed without any success, but in a dream I thought I was able to secure a print.

At work this morning I would sporadically attempt to get a print as well. With a new method mentioned on a messageboard I was able to score a print around 10am EST. The Obey Giant website took my cash and thanked me for my order.

The happiness would be short lived, as early in the afternoon the powers that be at Obey Giant issued a statement that basically said that all of us that ordered prints did so "illicitly" by copying and pasting a link and that the print never officially dropped. They informed us that we would all be issued refunds and would be banned from the re-release of PEACE BOMBER which will take place sometime tomorrow stating that the re-release would be for their TRUE fans. Sorry I thought that those of us that sat online all evening pushing F5 in an attempt to score a coveted print and give you our money were the true fans.

I guess I am mistaken.

Obey Giant can't handle the traffic they receive on release day. The site would not even load so as far as most of us knew the print was released, but we had no access to the product page due to the fact that the page would not load. Therefore we accessed the item directly via the product number and purchased it thru the shopping cart provided.

As a long time fan of Shepard Fairey who is still new to buying prints direct from Obey Giant this certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth and seems like a real shite way to treat people who spent hours on end in their attempts to secure a print.