In the summer of 1989, when he was 19 years old, the street artist Shepard Fairey stumbled into what he calls a “happy accident.” After completing his freshman year at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Fairey was working at the Watershed skate shop downtown, creating homemade stencils, and printing his own T-shirts. If his boss wasn’t around, he would sell the extra shirts in the shop. One day, when a friend wanted to learn how to cut a stencil, Fairey flipped through a newspaper and came across an ad for wrestling featuring Andre the Giant.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you cut a stencil of this?’ And he goes, ‘No way — that’s stupid,’” Fairey recalls. “And I just spontaneously said, ‘What are you talking about, man? Andre’s posse is taking over.’”
Just like that, one of the world’s most memetic images was born.
Read the full story at Miami New Times.
Photo by Dylan Rives, via Miami New Times
