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Shepard is in San Francisco this week painting two new murals to coincide with the opening of American Civics, the first-ever collaboration between Shepard and the estate of Jim Marshall. The exhibition opens this Saturday, August 13 at San Francisco Art Exchange! For details on the new murals, check out the SFist article below.
When: Saturday, August 13. Public Viewing from 1-4pm.
Where: San Francisco Art Exchange
458 Geary St, San Francisco, CA
Shepard Fairey Painting Two New Murals In SF This Week
BY JAY BARMANN
Murals, which will also be limited edition serigraphs, by Shepard Fairey of Cesar Chavez and Fannie Lee Chaney are being painted in Hayes Valley and the Mission, respectively. Images via Shepard Fairey
The man who famously created the Obama “Hope” poster (and those ubiquitous Andre the Giant stickers), artist Shepard Fairey, is in San Francisco this week executing two new murals as part of a series he’s doing about five “abiding issues of our time,” titled American Civics. The pieces, which will be released as limited edition serigraphs, are all based on photographs by photojournalist Jim Marshall, and the two being done as murals here in SF focus on the topics of voting rights and workers’ rights.
One mural, being painted Tuesday and Wednesday at 453 Hayes Street (at Linden) depicts labor activist Cesar Chavez, based on a photo Marshall took of Chavez after he completed his 300-mile march to Sacramento in support of farmworkers’ rights in 1966. “[Chavez] fought for the rights of people doing some of the most difficult work for some of the lowest wages so they could unionize and advocate for themselves to earn a dignified wage,” says Fairey. “In my art piece, I included articles that reflected the struggles of people who are on the lowest rung of the economic ladder.”
Fairey will be working on the mural from noon to sundown, today and tomorrow.
Then on Thursday and Friday, he’ll move to 701 Alabama Street (at 20th), where he’ll be painting a mural on the topic of voting rights, using a photo by Marshall of Fannie Lee Chaney from 1964, taken the day she found out that her son, James Chaney, and two friends died at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan at the age of 21 for registering African Americans to vote.
Fairey’s SF appearances culminate with a public art opening on Saturday, August 13, at the San Francisco Art Exchange (458 Geary Street), where he’ll be doing a meet-and-greet from 2 to 4 p.m. Other pieces in the series include one focused on gun control, one on income inequality, and one depicting Johnny Cash focused on mass incarceration.
