Shepard Fairey Works on Houston Street Wall Made Famous by Keith Haring Updated April 22, 2010 7:35am

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(DNAinfo/Patrick Hedlund)

By Patrick Hedlund

DNAinfo News Editor

LOWER EAST SIDE — Street artist Shepard Fairey got to work on his newest project on Houston Street Tuesday, breaking out the spray paint and his trademark poster designs for a piece blending pop art and political commentary.

Fairey, whose now-iconic “HOPE” portrait of Barack Obama came to symbolize his successful 2008 presidential run, is completing the sprawling installation at the corner of the Bowery as part of Soho-based Deitch Projects’ final exhibition.

Street artist Shepard Fairey work on his latest project on E. Houston Street and the Bowery Tuesday night. (DNAinfo/Patrick Hedlund)

The wall famously displayed a mural by renowned New York pop artist Keith Haring in the 1980s that was reproduced by Deitch in 2008, followed by a piece from the Brazilian street art duo Os Gêmeos last year.

Fairey, who gained notoriety for his Obama portrait and other highly visible poster-art campaigns, described the Houston Street effort as an exercise in democracy.

The piece will be a mash-up of some of Fairey's most well-known propaganda-style posters and will also pay tribute to the artist Jasper Johns, Fairey said. 

“Really, it’s just celebrating a lot of the different things I care about and condemning a lot of the things I’m upset about, and that’s how I’ve always worked,” he said, hinting that the kind of change he expected with the dawn of the Obama administration never occurred. 

“My expectation is that my piece may get dissed, and I’ll fix it,” Fairey said.

“That’s the nature of street art — it’s democratic. That’s good and bad. I look at it as very much the same as free speech. I’d rather hear something I find offensive than not be able to say what I want to say.”

By Patrick Hedlund, DNAinfo.com

Follow Patrick on Twitter @patrickhedlund