"People like to talk shit, but it's usually to justify their own apathy."
-Shepard Fairey
Let's get things straight. Things have turned around for me very nicely in the last month. But in that month, I have been made more and more aware of how I missed the starting gun. I have become increasingly aware and anxious of my ambitions of where I want to be. The brightest light on my current status has been the illumination of the (uncanny?) similarities between me and Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic Obama election poster as well as the "Obey" (Andre the Giant has a Posse) campaign.
We are the same age. We both started as screen printers. We both established our own design firms. We have both produced music shows and donated the proceeds to political (Democratic) candidates and charity. We both hate (and are obsessed with) jack-boot tyranny. We both have done posters and t-shirts and even album covers. We look similar and dress similar. He's ultimately more successful than I and it doesn't make me feel very good about where I am in my art and success.
The differences are that he's married and has 2 kids. He lives in LA. He's been arrested 14 times or more for his art. I've only been arrested once for turning right on red with an unpaid speeding ticket. He's a DJ and makes a profit doing art. I only break even. He's been featured in the New York Times. He's a better and more prolific artist than me.
Shepard Fairey has recently been interviewed by 2 people I hold in the highest regard: Terry Gross and Stephen Colbert.
Shepard Fairey interview with Terry Gross
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I can't help but think that should be me getting interviewed by Colbert and Gross and commissioned by the Obama Campaign. I am striving to take his success as example, not as my own failure... but I'm getting old and I need to move faster. I'm not going to move to LA, so I'll be hobbled a bit here in redder-than-red mans land, but I hold the label of Underdog as a badge, so that won't stop me. Here's hope in your eye. Now I have some work to do.
2 comments:
You shouldn't compare yourself to others who were benefits of circumstance as much as their own abilities. "Right place, right time" has more of an effect on success than anyone gives it credit for, and while Fairey is clearly a driven individual who spent his free time creating art (while most of us were ingesting it), his place in the artistic consciousness owes a lot to the circle of people he was around, and the times he was there.
Besides, you were bitching about this guy and his contemporaries being in that documentary last august, about how they "become what you hate." What's different now?
in my defense, I was bitching about the presentation of skateboard anarchist artists being framed in the light of auto-harp music as well as the selling out of skateboard anarchist artists.
I make no bones about being a whore. What is different is the quote at the beginning of the post.
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