Fairey is also very hot.
Fairey was arrested feet from the Institute of Contemproary Art on years-old vandalism charges as he made his way to his exhibit's opening night party in February. He was taken away and booked. This caused major annoyance among the ICA attendees who were waiting for Fairey to DJ an opening night party, tickets to which cost mucho dinero. At first Fairey's arrest seemed to have some silver linings: Fairey got his high-art cred and street cred affirmed on the same day! And as the Boston Phoenix suggested back in February, the orginal arrest might have been nothing more than political gamesmanship; payback for the mayor's recent strong-arm tactics with the police union during budget cuts, coupled with the Mayor posing for a photo-op with Boston's most infamous tagger.
Unfortunately things took a darker turn yesterday as 7 criminal complaints were dropped and the remaining 10 were upgraded from misdemeanors to felonies. This means that Fairey is now potentially facing a maximum penalty of 30 YEARS IN PRISON! Had the charges remained misdemeanors at most he would have paid $1000 in fines plus restitution.
In addition to the Boston charges, Fairey faces 12 seperate criminal complaints in Roxbury
Are we sensing a certain degree of double-standards here? Is Fairey getting the felony counts because he's so well known? What message does this send to Boston area artists?
I stand by my orginal solution: Obama should pardon Fairey. That Hope poster wasn't just iconic in its aesthetics, it perfectly packaged the candidate as patriotic, bold, new, and (yes) hip. Obama owes Fairey. And this is rapidly turning into a ridiculous cluster-fuck that's an embarrassment for Boston. And seriously, do we really need to add to our clogged prison systems' woes by sentencing a street artist to prison for 30 years?????
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