Comparative
SONOMA
CARLOS
Study
Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey is an American street artist, activist, illustrator, and graphic designer. He started the Giant campaign while he was a student at and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and is also the founder of the brand of clothing. His work is intended to provoke social awareness and activism. Fairey is most well-known for the “Hope” poster (depicting Obama, 2008) and his “We the People” series of posters used widely at the recent National Women’s Marches.
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Jen Lewin
Jen Lewin is most well-known for her interactive art work and studio slogan, “Please Touch the ART!” Some of her most notable pieces include “The Pool”, a travelling installation made of dozens of interactive light-up circles, and “The Laser Harp Series”, in which large sculptures shine lasers down to the ground, and when the lasers are intercepted by something (like �a hand), produce a musical sound.
Fairey’s artwork includes a palette composed of highly saturated primary colors, featuring red, blue, white, and black colors, as well as prints/patterns to create value in his pieces.
His artwork comes in many forms, including prints, murals, stickers, and apparel.
The artist’s style is distinct; many of his pieces display a symbol as his signature. In the portraits of the two women (depicted in figures one and 3), a nearly identical mandala was used to mark the work as his own.
in order for different musical notes to be played, either at random or methodically, and, �in harmony, create a calming sound. She also uses stainless steel supports for her larger pieces.
Lewin uses “custom circuitry and sensors” in her laser harp pieces
Fairey uses stencils, spray cans, and exacto knives for his everyday street art.
1. Uses a computer to create designs.
2. Mural/Outdoor art is done on foam core.
3. Printed out in black and white, painted in red and varnish (to create an off-white color).
4. Many designs are screen printed, but this method restricts the size of his art. He worked around this issue by designing the prints so they work well together if repeated and placed side by side in a grid.
She also uses the Golden Ratio, like �in her art piece “Aqueous”, to make the composition of her interactive, light-up, “dichroic” platforms aesthetically pleasing.
Another common thread in Lewin’s pieces are LED bulbs. They typically react to changes in �the environment (e.g. movement, pressure) with a shift in color. When stimuli is present, the LEDs will light up individually, but the lack of space between them helps make their response seem more unified.
Primary colors are used heavily in this piece, in addition to black and white. The colors with the most presence are blue and red, with the most blue being on the right half of the print, and the most red on the left half.
Shepard Fairey: Wrong Path
These works are connected by their intention to raise awareness about a controversial social topic. While in “Wrong Path”, the topic is a critique of the unsustainable reliance on oil and gas, “Bias by Numbers” is an informative piece about racial equality for African-Americans. Both, however, were made by collaging images of women, recolored newspaper clippings, primary color patterns, and diagonal lines.
Diagonal stripe patterns are used repeatedly to flank the image of a woman, whose face is partly hidden by enlarged leaves in the foreground. The striping is placed in the upper and middle thirds on both the left and right side, and emphasize two of the largest pieces of text in the piece: the white number 3 and the black word oil.
Many of Fairey’s pieces are components of an unofficial series with a focus on social justice. These works are connected by their intention to raise awareness about a controversial social topic. While in “Wrong Path”, the topic is a critique of the unsustainable reliance on oil and gas, “Bias by Numbers” is an informative piece about racial equality for African-Americans. Both, however, were made by collaging images of women, recolored newspaper clippings, primary color patterns, and diagonal lines.
Cultural Significance
The colors of the French flag in the background and their negatives (used to illustrate the patterns surrounding the image of the woman), harmonize to not only bring attention to the contrast in what the distinct colors on the French flag represent (liberty, equality, and fraternity), but also their unity. In this way, Fairey was able to emphasize the importance of finding perseverance in togetherness.
Shepard Fairey:
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite
The words “Liberte”, “Egalite”, and “Fraternite” frame the circular vignette of a woman at the center of the piece. Both the words and the vignette consist of sharp, distinct black lines. These align with horizontal lines that divide the piece into
thirds to bring the audience’s focus to them. These words, all in the same font and designed in the same style, represent one of the mottos used during the French Revolution (and today) to symbolize the strength, pride, and unity of the French in times of struggle: whether that be revolution or recovering from the 2015 terror attacks.
Lewin attempted to create a piece that encourages the onlooker to go beyond being an observer by interacting with their surroundings to change the meaning of this art themselves. Whatever they decide the arrangement or composition of the arrows will be impacts what the arrows point to and the accompa-
nying emotional response.
This piece exhibits a very simplistic composition. Like Fairey’s Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité poster, Lewin used thirds to put focus on the center of the piece.
While the shape of each glowing arrow is uniform throughout, the size of the middle arrow is larger than the two on either side of it.
Jen Lewin: Pointers
Background
Shepard Fairey was attacked outside of a nightclub in Denmark by two people telling him to “go back to America” and calling him “Obama illuminati”. According to Fairey, the attackers targeted him because they misinterpreted a mural he made that was intended to honor a well-known youth house in Denmark.
In high school he got into art by putting his drawings on t-shirts and skateboards, which blossomed into the Obey brand that got popularity through the skateboarding community. He has also faced adversity in his life outside of the art world, as he is a Type 1 diabetic.
Lewin attended public school, and
in 3rd grade (1983) learned Logo programming- which taught kids to make turtle graphics/drawings through coding- and was fascinated by it.
Logo Programming
Both pieces include a theme of shape and color repetition, as well as rotation mechanisms for large light structures. The intention of these artworks as a whole is for the audience to tailor the art to how they wish to see it, altering its meaning with every adjustment / new arrangement.
Further connections . . .
Lewin also used similar composition in another interactive piece called “Ms”. The artwork features two vintage 3-dimensional star logos: one in the left third of the wall space, and the other on the right third. The middle third of the wall is left bare, unlike in “Pointers”, but still draws attention to that area regardless (because of the absence of a yellow star-shaped design).
She attended University of Colorado, where she got her bachelor’s degree in Computer Aided Design
and Architecture.
She later earned her master’s degree in Interactive Design from The New York University Tisch School of the Arts.