World-renowned street artist Shepard Fairey - infamous for creating Obama's "Hope" image during the 2008 presidential campaign and more recently the "obey" street art - has apparently run out of it.
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He was arraigned today, after turning himself into Detroit police, on felony charges that he illegally tagged public and private property in the city. Detroit Police last month said Fairey set a bad example for other artists when he plastered his signature Andre the Giant posters on buildings in and near downtown.
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As Detroit Free Press reports, [7]
[7]Fairey, 45, took a flight from Los Angeles — where he was initially detained last week — to Detroit on Monday evening.
He is accused of causing about $9,000 in damage to nine illegally tagged properties while he was in Detroit in May. He was invited here for commissioned work that included an 18-story mural on One Campus Martius for Dan Gilbert's Bedrock Real Estate Services and others.
Fairey faces two counts of malicious destruction of property, which carry a maximum penalty of five years in jail, plus fines that could exceed $10,000.
Approached after the flight, Fairey declined to speak on the issue: "Can't talk about anything," he said.
He didn't speak at his arraignment Wednesday morning, and his attorney Bradley Friedman declined to comment on the charges.
Doug Baker, attorney for the city of Detroit and a retired Wayne County prosecutor, is taking graffiti cases through an arrangement with the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office. He said there are about eight to 10 other cases the city is working to "vigorously" enforce laws against defacing property.
Asked what Baker thinks of people treating Detroit as a place they can get away with graffiti, he replied:
"That is an attitude that we run into, because we get people coming into the city that view it as a free-fire zone, that view at as a place where no one cares," Baker said. "And that's what we'er changing. We're changing that culture of belief."
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Just lucky he is not a young black "hope"-less "thug" or things could have got serious.
