Graffiti judged low priority in S.F.

C.W. Nevius

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Five years ago, Gideon Kramer was thrilled to be appointed to San Francisco's graffiti advisory board.

"I really thought I could make a difference," the graphic designer and 30-year city resident said Friday.

Has it come to jail time to wipe out graffiti?

C.W. Nevius

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Like the city of San Francisco, North Beach resident Micki Jones is fighting a losing battle against graffiti.

"I paint it over and it is usually tagged again in 48 hours," said Jones, who covers up graffiti on her home and other buildings on her block. "It used to be weeks, but now those guys are out there every night."

NEW YORK (AP) - The Associated Press has countersued an artist over his famous campaign posters of President Barack Obama. The AP says the image's uncredited, uncompensated use of an AP photo signals a threat to journalism.

Art turns ugly in squabble over 'Hope'

original article is here

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, February 13, 2009

(02-12) 18:45 PST --

Artist Shepard Fairey says that he has distributed more than 300,000 copies of his iconic poster of President Obama with the word "Hope" written underneath and that it has inspired countless other versions. Now, the 38-year-old Los Angeles street artist, who says he used an Associated Press photograph as a "visual reference" for his piece, is in the middle of a copyright battle that goes to the heart of how media is made, remixed and mashed up.

Given the notoriety of Fairey's iconic poster, "it is kind of the perfect storm," said Michael Kwun, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital advocacy organization. "It raises questions about what we as a culture and a legal society feel is proper."

Shepard Fairey Arrested In Boston

JAY LINDSAY | February 7, 2009 08:30 PM EST |

BOSTON — A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Obama has been arrested on warrants accusing him of tagging property with graffiti, police said Saturday.

Shepard Fairey was arrested Friday night on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition, called "Supply and Demand."

• Ed Pilkington in New York
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 February 2009 17.49 GMT

For a street artist whose work is scrupulously shrouded in anonymity to evade detection by the NYPD, Poster Boy's comeuppance resulted from a puzzlingly sloppy lowering of his guard.

The anti-consumerist guerrilla artist, dubbed New York's Banksy, was picked up by plain clothed officers on Saturday at an art show in the SoHo area of
Manhattan, his presence at the event having been openly proclaimed on a fly leaflet.

AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image

Feb 4 06:56 PM US/Eastern By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.

Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

Original blog post can be found at Images to Live By

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Australian state of Victoria just can’t make up its mind as to what it thinks about graffiti and street art. On the one hand, it uses images of graffiti and street art to promote tourism, showing images of Melbourne’s laneways (well, Hosier Lane, usually) on television and in its information guides (have a look here). On the other hand - well, it has recently passed a new statute called the Graffiti Prevention Act 2007, which creates a bundle of new criminal offences and gives the police new powers of search, which hardly seems to fit with its marketing of Melbourne as the city of cool street art.