I do think that copyrights and intellectual property are important - it's important to be able to keep people from making verbatim copies of a particular creation that could somehow hurt the creator. If I spend time conceiving and making a piece of art and somebody else sees that it has market value and replicates it in order to steal part of my market, then that's not cool.
Shepard FaireyI think the biggest thing that people fear when it comes to art becoming a business is those authentic, pure aspirations of art being compromised.
Shepard FaireyThe sticker has no meaning, but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning.
Shepard FaireyWhen it comes to the street-art world, there are a lot of people who realize if they go out and put up a few pieces of street art and photograph them really well, even if their locations weren't actually that high-profile or dangerous, with the level of exposure they get from the Internet, with a large audience, they can maintain that rebel cache by having it be theoretically documented street art.
Shepard FaireyIf you're creating something that has some sort of cultural currency - if the idea is getting out there - then that will probably yield money in some form, whether it's through selling art or selling books or being asked to give a lecture.
Shepard FaireyI might be botching this quote but I agree with the idea that a measure of society is not how it treats its most powerful but how it treats its most vulnerable, including the poor and incarcerated and - I would add to that - the people whose ideas are not currently in favor.
Shepard FaireyI don't agree with most forms of censorship, and I especially don't agree with the idea that one needs to be from the same cultural, ethnic, or religious background as the subjects they portray in order to be qualified to portray those subjects. I believe that compassion and empathy should cross all of those category barriers, and the conversations art creates can be inflammatory initially, but I think are most often constructive and healing in the long run.
Shepard Fairey