Fairy Wallpaper

Fairy Wallpaper Biography

Graphic works comprised of stenciling, collage and screen printing.
Often described as a Street artist, Fairey's name first began to appear in the news for wheat pasting (adorning public spaces with the artist's own posters, affixed to walls, signs and other elements by way of a water + wheat mixture--as in wallpaper paste), sticker tagging, and the numerous accompanying arrests that now comprise his official criminal record.
Date and Place of Birth:
February 15, 1970, Charleston, South Carolina
The artist's legal name is Frank Shepard Fairey. He goes by the latter two names in professional life.
Early Life and Training:
Son of a physician, Shepard Fairey fell in love with making art at age 14. After graduating from the prestigious Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts in Idyllwild, California in 1988, he was accepted at the Rhode Island School of Design. (If you're not familiar with this fine institution, RISD is almost ridiculously hard to get into and enjoys a sterling reputation as a training ground for working artists.) Fairey graduated in 1992 with a B.F.A. in Illustration.
Ending Up on the Street:
While attending RISD, Fairey had a part time job in a Providence skateboarding shop. The marginalized, "underground" culture there (where styles are out as soon as they're in) synthesized with that rarified art school culture and Fairey's ongoing interests in (1) punk music and (2) stenciling his own punk music t-shirts.
Everything meshed on the day a friend asked him how to create a stencil. Fairey demonstrated with a newspaper ad for a professional wrestling match featuring Andre the Giant which was the most banal image he could have grabbed. Tantalizing "what if" possibilities began to cross Fairey's mind.

Fairy Wallpaper