Shepard Fairey Takes On Eastsider LA Blog: Gloves Off!

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Drama in yon Echo Park! Renown street artist Shep coats own exterior brick studio wall with anti-graffiti material, reports Eastsider LA blog. Shepard takes umbrage to said post and fires off angry email. Eastsider blog reprints said email this AM; comment section goes up in flames accordingly.

While I’m not about to throw my hat into the ring here, as a blog writer, or “blogger” if you will, I respected Shepard for offering the following quote to LAist’s Andy Sternberg back in February, 2008:

Any words of wisdom for aspiring street artists / disruptors / dissenters?
My advice is to stick to what you believe with tenacity. Don’t read snarky blogs and message boards because lazy sideline critics can bum you out, and ultimately have little effect on the outcome of things compared to those who take real action. Just follow your passion.

I should elaborate. Having spent way too much time online over the course of the last two decades, much as I respected Shep for saying that, I firmly believe that many peoples’ passion in life is in fact being snarky-as-a-motherfucker for no apparent reason. We try to be more-or-less even keel over in the (largely musical) Losanjealous waters, but it’s not always easy, and his words might be taken broader and strike some sort of nerve for anybody writing about other peoples’ projects other than their own, be it for a blog or as a profession (or, natch, for a blog as a profession). It’s unfortunate that Shep forgot to follow his own sage advice this week, and he presumably agrees: I can picture him, sitting over there at Studio One right now, refreshing “Eastsider LA” every 30 seconds, growing more and more steamed with each negative comment (whether on topic or not), becoming suddenly and briefly vindicated each time somebody posts a positive comment, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad graffitum. We’ve all been there. I personally suspect this ridiculous worldwide myotatic behavior may have originally started over at Craigslist’s legendary “rants and raves” section. So much so, in fact, that I’m headed there – right now – to see just what I’ve been missing since I stopped opening jpegs with trepidation and began following blogs all those years ago. I have a lot of catching up to do.

SPEAKING OF SHEP
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