Graffiti Art Takes Presidential Race To The Streets

On a brick wall in downtown Atlanta that usually is splattered with graffiti tag names, a spray-paint portrait of Barack Obama now gazes over the streetscape.

In Chicago, an abandoned warehouse on the city's South Side displays a life-size silhouette of the Illinois senator, microphone in hand.

And all over Los Angeles -- on stop signs, underpasses, buildings and billboards -- hundreds of movie posters and stickers of Obama, emblazoned with the word "Hope," have been slapped up, guerrilla-style.

This year, some of the most arresting images in the race for the White House are not the work of ad agencies, political consultants or photojournalists but of a subculture of artists who use the streets as their canvas. Their pro-Obama work -- there is no similar phenomenon for John McCain -- has been spotted everywhere, even Paris and Beijing.

It's an odd twist in the world of street art, an arena where creative renegades question power and convention with their homemade posters and hand-painted murals -- and don't usually endorse major party politicians.

"It's not cool with the sort of rebellious, punk, street-artist types to support something that is seen as a part of the system," said Shepard Fairey, the Los Angeles-based street artist responsible for the "Hope" posters and stickers.

Yet when it comes to Obama, street artists around the country are falling into line. "Obama's a rock star, he's got a great brand and he's a very sexy candidate," explained Ian Bourland, a University of Chicago graduate student who is one of the few academics studying recent street art. "It's his race, his politics and his charisma."

Street artists embrace the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's experience as a community organizer, in part because they view their own movement as similarly grass-roots. "He's perceived as sharing their ethos," Bourland said.

Fairey and Chicago artist Ray Noland plan to be in Denver next week for the Democratic National Convention. Noland will be hawking his paintings and posters and Fairey will be there as a judge in the Manifest Hope Gallery Contest, a national art competition he is sponsoring with MoveOn.org. Artists from around the country were asked to submit work about Obama or centered around the themes of hope, progress, change, patriotism or unity. The best works will be displayed at the Manifest Hope Gallery, which will be set up in downtown Denver.

August 23, 2008