Meanwhile, Fairey had started making T-shirts, and in the summer after his junior year, he started a printing business. He wrote off the fine-art world altogether. "I looked at it like this: I can be seen as cool and creative and somebody that's bringing great stuff into the realm of, you know, pop culture and skateboarding and punk music, in just whatever Dada goof-off stickering. Or I can be seen as not that talented in the fine-art world." He laughs. "So naturally I'm gonna gravitate to where I think I can succeed."
When his print shop struggled, he sold it and moved to San Diego, eventually teaming with Kinsey at what became BLK/MRKT. He was $30,000 in debt. "At that time in my life, you know, there was no, like, ethical consideration. Like, 'Would this be compromising my art?' I have to survive. Right now." He also had no experience using a computer, which was becoming a necessity for designers. In a gamble that nearly bankrupted them, he and Kinsey printed an expensive brochure and did a mass mailing to as many companies as they could think of.
By then, Obey Giant was a minor phenomenon, but of course it had never generated a dime--nor was it intended to. To the extent that the campaign had a point, it was simply to provoke thought and reaction in the viewer; its lack of context or reference point was part of the idea. But the years of spreading the campaign for esoteric reasons paid off in a way Fairey could never have anticipated and brought him, ironically enough, to the attention of the fine-art world. Gallery owners in New York City and elsewhere would see the posters, track him down, and ask him to participate in shows. "In the end, I completely circumvented the gallery system by doing street art."
It also helped his new business. That mailing got attention. "A lot of people at the companies we mailed to also had seen my stuff on the street and were looking for a way to get hold of me but had no idea how. So when we sent the brochure out and it had samples of my work, they were like 'There's that guy!' It wasn't ever my strategy that I was trying to advertise my graphic-design skills with the posters. It was the de facto result."
Fairey owns Studio Number One with his wife, Amanda. They also own the gallery and Obey Giant Art Inc., which sells Fairey's fine-art work (bought by museums, as well as clients like Ozzy Osbourne and the rapper Chingy). Finally, there is a licensing deal with a partnership called Obey Clothing, which makes and sells T-shirts, jackets, pants, and so on, for men and women, all featuring the icon face. Royalties go to Obey Giant LLC, another partnership.
BLK/MRKT's annual revenue with Fairey reached nearly $1 million, and the goal for Studio Number One is to get back to that level on an annual basis. By early January, the Sunkist and Express projects were done (Express was market-testing the eagle design that Fairey created but had not made final plans for rolling out the jeans), and new ones were starting up. In all, it's not a bad situation for the guy who didn't have enough confidence in his work to pursue a traditional art career. But it's still pretty complicated. He has learned, for example, that when he turns down those who want something recognizably in sync with his street art, someone else ends up getting hired to imitate that style. And he won't get paid. So he tends not to turn down such assignments. Why should someone else get paid to rip off his street art if he can figure out a way to do it himself, presumably better?
Not surprisingly, Fairey has heard the charge that he's a sellout, particularly from fans of his earliest work who accuse him of employing his skills for needlessly commercial ends. Fairey's attitude is, not surprisingly, more complex. On the one hand, he will roll his eyes at the predictable demands of those clients who seem to be chasing the same handful of "trendy" consumers. On the other hand, he takes pride in the work he does for those clients.
It took a certain stubbornness to stick with a project like Obey Giant for those years when it was little more than a curiosity, and that may be Fairey's defining characteristic. Questioned about why, in his middle 30s, he still feels the need to sneak around in the dead of night pasting up his images--that New York City incident wasn't isolated; I got a tour of freshly pasted images in Los Angeles--he says it's something he simply "needs" to do. In similar fashion, Fairey refuses to concede much to critics. "People make this very black-and-white delineation. But I say, 'How would you feel about it if it were a little more ambiguous? If all companies had marketing materials that didn't insult the consumer? That were somewhat creative and intelligent and almost like an art piece with a product behind it?" The self-branded rebels might not like it, he says, but "it sounds pretty utopian to me." I
