Creator of iconic Obama poster a Charleston native

Image by Flickr user whorangeImage by 20081012obama.jpg The "Progress/Hope" posters are one of Shepard Fairey's works.

Charleston can claim ties to one more innovative work: Shepard Fairey was born February 15, 1970 in Charleston and the now-Los Angeles-based artiest wanted to create something memorable for the 2008 Obama campaign, that he did.

The Washington Post writes:
Fairey wanted something more iconic -- aspirational, inspirational -- and cool. In other words, he wanted to make posters that the cool cats would want. The 2008 Democratic primary season equivalent of the Che poster (with all that implies). More Mao, more right now. The kind of poster that might make its way onto dorm room walls of fanboys. The kind of poster that might sell on eBay, as a signed Fairey Obama recently did, for $5,900. He wanted his posters to go viral.

But his tail doesn't end there, Fairey took his work to the Denver Convention in hopes of spreading his message further, but that got him labeled as a protester and thrown in jail. So Charleston City Paper caught up with him and his tail.

Fairey also created the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, which later evolved into "Obey Giant."

Update October 29: The Charleston City Paper points out a ton of parodies of Fairey's work.