One of my most vivid memories of 2008 were election night. On a giant screen in one of my city’s most beautiful old theaters I got to join the jubilant celebration of hundreds of Obama volunteers watch the digital representation of the electorial college talley votes cast that very day. As the final mathmatically impossible to beat  configuration of blue and red states gave the network anchor the confidence to call Obama our next president a triumphant cheer rose up out of every person in that theater. The energy level was unbelievable, hundreds of people cheering, hugging, crying. It was an iconic event, a culmination of not just that November day when we universally make our voices heard at polling stations but a culmination of generations of people who had fought for equal rights for all citizens. It resonated deeply with me as some of my first vivid memories of the outside world were during the turbulent tragic days when Martin Luther King was assassinated. On that day school was cut short and the next day as well. There were whispers, saddness and unease emanating from the grown ups who didn’t know what to tell us. And for weeks and months after the tragedy with the lives of icons being cut short by violence it weighed heavy in my young world. This is the culmination of that history that no doubt helped shape Barak Obama into the icon he is now at this moment.

Four years before, on another chilly November night, at a downtown gallery opening I was dazzled by the iconic work of this then little know artist and poster raconteur Shepard Fairey. He’d made his bones with guerilla installations of one singular image of Andre the Giant with the words Obey. It had become a ubiquitous part of my art ghetto neighborhood. But there was definitely something more here where I could see a whole body of work with such a singular style. Mocking while reverential of the power of symbols and icons in propaganda imagery. It’s not that wrist slitting blood-shedding art, but it winks longingly at it’s commercial base origins in propaganda art. In 2004 no one was thinking about Angela Davis Bobby Seal and Chairman Mao, but here they were on the walls of the Gallery. This kid was not just reminding us about the power of art to influence for good and bad, but the art of it.

I spoke for a few minutes to simply say how much I like the show and how powerful the work was. He was very nice, very personable, very genuinely engaged and focused about his work. Somehow I was not surprised to hear he was the artist behind the iconic Obama imagery. The image was so genuine that it rose above being regurgitated over and over again in the media — testament to Fairey’s talent to recognize and translate symbolic images. Imitators now abound.

Ironically Fairy who was at the DNC for a gallery show and filming of a documentary was arrested outside the democratic convention with the posters in hand, wheat pasting them to areas around the convention. Riot cops came guns drawn. The police after finally convinced he meant no harm released him for $500 in bail. In an interview he said the sad thing was once they understood he had created the Obama image their automatic response was to assume he got a lot of money for it. Fairey donated all the money from the poster to the campaign.

It would seem a cycle has been completed, the United States finally has another iconic leader and the imagery that will be most remembered was created by iconoclast who started his art with guerilla tactics born of a new generation whose dissent and angst shapes their own generation.

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