Fairey will also participate in a lecture and Q&A conversation for the campus and wider Santa Fe community

Santa Fe University of Art and Design (SFUAD) announced today that contemporary artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey will visit Santa Fe for a lecture and Q&A discussion and will create a mural design as part of the university’s 2013–2014 Artists for Positive Social Change series. The lecture and Q&A, free and open to the public, will be hosted by Graphic Design Department chair David Grey and held at SFUAD’s Greer Garson Theatre on Sunday, Feb. 17, at 7 p.m. Fairey will also design and paint a permanent outdoor campus mural during the week of Feb. 18.

Launched in 2011, Artists for Positive Social Change is a university-wide series of events, courses, lectures and performances exploring a specific theme relevant to society and the work of artists who push the creative boundaries of their profession. This year’s theme is “Art and Political Activism.”

Over the past 20 years, Fairey has seen a meteoric rise to become one of the most influential contemporary artists today, with a multitude of international mural projects and exhibitions that began in the early 90’s.  In 1989, while attending Rhode Island School of Design, Fairey created the “Andre the Giant has a Posse” image, which ignited and evolved into the present-day OBEY GIANT campaign. Though they started with an absurd sticker, the OBEY GIANT graphics have since taken cues from popular culture, commercial marketing and political messaging to change the way people see art and the urban landscape.

In 2003, Fairey founded Studio Number One, a creative firm dedicated to applying his ethos wherever art and enterprise intersect. Building on Fairey’s approach to designing striking, thought-provoking work, the company has evolved into its own creative entity and become one of the top boutique agencies in the country. The firm has produced artwork for a number of high-profile bands and motion pictures, including the Black Eyed Peas, the Smashing Pumpkins, Flogging Molly, Led Zeppelin, and the film Walk the Line.

In 2008, his portrait of then-Democratic candidate Barack Obama, with the word ”HOPE” under the illustration, became an internationally recognized emblem of the Obama campaign and a symbol of political change for many. The artwork now resides in the Smithsonian Institution in its National Portrait Gallery as an official presidential portrait.

“I enjoy any opportunity to share my work and my philosophy that art can be about aesthetics and escapism, but simultaneously ideas and engagement,” said Fairey. “I strive to erode the perceived barriers between fine art and graphic art. My public art and many other chosen platforms are democratic and invite the audience into the dialog.”

Along with the Obama campaign, Fairey has also donated artwork and made contributions to charitable organizations and causes such as the ACLU, MoveOn, Hope for Darfur, the Chiapas Relief Fund, marriage equality reform, 11th Hour Action, Hurricane Katrina relief, The Art of Elysium, Southern California fire relief, shelters for L.A. teens, children’s charities in Iraq and the United States, Free the West Memphis 3, Feeding America, Adopt-a-Pet.com and the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.

Fairey has continued to progress with his art, with a 20-year retrospective museum exhibition that began at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2009 and continued to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. Last year, he was commissioned by Time Magazine to design a cover in celebration of “The Protester,” an anonymous figure representative of momentous world demonstrations such as the Arab Spring and Occupy movement. It was his second Time cover. He has also designed covers for Rolling Stone and Esquire magazines.

“Few visual artists working today have impacted contemporary culture as Shepard has,” said David Scheinbaum, SFUAD’s director of photography and artist-in-residence, who spearheaded the Artists for Positive Social Change initiative. “Not without controversy, Shepard is an artist who has stayed consistent with his message and offered his work for use by numerous politically active groups, as well as to reinforce his own thoughts and opinions.”

Other events in this year’s Artists for Positive Social Change series have included a multimedia presentation by arts supporter and musician Tom Maguire called Barbarians at the Gate – Stravinsky, Diaghilev & the Ballets Russes, as well as a simulcast of New York’s Creative Time Summit, whose theme was “Confronting Inequity.” Additional events will be announced in the spring.

Tickets will be required for community admittance to the lecture and Q&A on Feb. 17 and can be picked up free of charge in early February. No reservations will be accepted; a maximum of four tickets will be given to individuals on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more on Fairey and OBEY GIANT, visit www.OBEYGIANT.com.

About Artists for Positive Social Change
Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Artists for Positive Social Change is a groundbreaking, university-wide series of events, lectures and performances that highlights one theme each year as part of a five-year initiative. All departments of the university engage in an in-depth exploration of the chosen theme, discussing the work of relevant artists who have respectfully and fearlessly pushed the creative boundaries of their medium. During the initiative’s inaugural 2011–2012 academic year, Artists for Positive Social Change focused on hip-hop not just as entertainment, but as a significant form of communication and a cultural force around the world.

About Santa Fe University of Art and Design
Santa Fe University of Art and Design is an accredited institution located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of the world’s leading centers for art and design. The university offers degrees in arts management, contemporary music, creative writing, digital arts, graphic design, film, performing arts, photography and studio art. Faculty members are practicing artists who teach students in small groups, following a unique interdisciplinary curriculum that combines hands-on experience with core theory and prepares graduates to become well-rounded, creative, problem-solving professionals. As a Laureate International Universities Center of Excellence in Art, Architecture and Design, the university boasts an international student body and opportunities to study abroad, encouraging students to develop a global perspective on the arts. Santa Fe University of Art and Design is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and a member of the North Central Association, www.ncahlc.org.

Phillips de Pury & Company: Watercolors
1 -19 October 2012
Monday – Saturday, 10AM- 6PM
450 West 15th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011

Phillips de Pury & Company:Watercolors, is an exhibition featuring a diverse group of contemporary works by artists who have moved beyond using watercolor as an auxiliary mode of expression to embracing it as their primary medium. The exhibition showcases over 80 abstract and figurative works that challenge the romantic ideologies associated with historical watercolor.

Featuring contemporary works by:

BEN BLATT, DELIA BROWN, JULIA COLAVITA, SERENA COLE, ANNIKA CONNOR, TEODOR DUMITRESCU, ERIC FISCHL, ROY FOWLER, RICHARD GABRIELE, JILL GALARNEAU, TIM GARDNER, JOHN GORDON GAULD, JUDITH HUDSON, AUBREY LEARNER, EVA LUNDSAGER, ANDREA MARY MARSHALL, MARTINA MOLIN, KANISHA RAJA, LAURIE REID, WILLY BO RICHARDSON, CHARLES RITCHIE, ALEXIS ROCKMAN, ELIZABETH ROGERS, LOLA SCHNABEL, BILLY SULLIVAN, PHILIP TAAFE AND DARIUS YEKTAI

Watercolors is curated by Kristin Sancken, and organized in conjunction with Active Ideas Productions, Inc. Also in partnership are galleries 303, Ricco Maresca, Bravin Lee Programs, Greenberg Van Doren, Halsey McKay, Tripoli, Salomon Contemporary, Eli Ridgway, and Nicole Klagsburn.

PHILLIPS de PURY & COMPANY: Video footage from opening reception, courtesy of Diamond Shot Studio

https://youtu.be/uLSIy-ihyQU

As the only international auction house to concentrate exclusively on contemporary culture, Phillips de Pury & Company has established a commanding position in the sale of Contemporary Art, Design, Photographs, Editions and Jewelry. For more information on the exhibition, please visit:

Auction Publicity

Phillips de Pury & Company Press Release: phillips.com/press.

To learn more about the process for this series of watercolors by Willy Bo Richardson, read the Gallery Intell article: galleryIntell Willy Bo Richardson – Watercolors – Phillips de Pury

March 16- April 29, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, March 23, 5:30 to 7:30

Linda Swanson installation is comprised to two large scale pencil drawings on paper one 10 foot by 4 foot and the other 4 foot by 10 foot paired with a felt wing stitched with pieces of her daughters hair. The title references Penelope’s travails while Odysseus is away from home. Linda Swanson is the Chair of the Art Department of Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of New Mexico’s statehood, and in anticipation of the New Mexico Museum of Art’s centennial, we are presenting a year-long cycle of alcove exhibitions. The format of these Alcove Shows can be traced back to the 1917 founding of the Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico. Small one-person exhibitions were held in the gallery alcoves through the 1950s, resuming in the mid-1980s and again in the early 1990s.

The museum is continuing this tradition with a cycle of nine exhibitions that will include forty-five artists from across the state. Five artists will exhibit for five weeks at a time from March of 2012 through early April of 2013. These artist-centered showcases feature new ideas, artists at all stages of their careers and artwork that is being made in New Mexico right now.

The first of this series will open at the New Mexico Museum of Art on March 16, 2012 and will include Julia Barello, David Forlano, Jane Lackey, Ted Larsen, and Linda Swanson. All of these artists live and work in New Mexico and all are using unusual materials and shifts in scale in distinctive ways.

The New Mexico Museum of Art, founded in 1917 as the Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico, is housed in a spectacular Pueblo Revival building designed by I. H. and William M. Rapp based on their New Mexico building at the Panama-California Exposition (1915). The museum’s architecture inaugurated what has come to be known as “Santa Fe Style.” For nearly 100 years, the Museum has celebrated the diversity of the visual arts and the legacy of New Mexico as a cultural crossroads by collecting and exhibiting work by leading artists from New Mexico and elsewhere. This tradition continues today with a wide-array of exhibitions with work from the world’s leading artists.The New Mexico Museum of Art brings the art of New Mexico to the world and the art of the world to New Mexico.

Information for the Public

Location:Santa Fe’s Plaza at 107 West Palace Avenue.