‘Eyes open, mind open’: Famous artist with Rock Hill ties creates downtown mural
Under a baking October sun in Rock Hill, street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey hopped onto a lift that took him to the top of the future Mercantile building where he shook his first can of spray paint.
On White Street at the intersection of three churches, dozens of spectators stood by with umbrellas for shade and cell phones to video as they watched Fairey and half-a-dozen artists paint the mural.
Fairey’s work, displayed all over the world, always has a message. It was time to see what he wanted to tell Rock Hill.
Who is Shepard Fairey?
Fairey has made a name for himself across the country -- and the world. His most familiar work is the high-contrast stencil “hope,” poster, which became an official image of Former President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Fairey created the image to support Obama’s first presidential campaign.
The New Yorker magazine called the poster “the most efficacious American political illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You.’”
But Fairey’s influence started much earlier. A project Fairey created in 1989 inspired the “OBEY” brand.
You’ll recognize the brand sticker, featuring an ink-blot portrait of wrestler Andre the Giant and the brand’s “OBEY” stamp. The sticker can be found on people’s laptops, lamp posts and backpacks.
And Fairey has turned the sticker into a giant clothing company.
And now Fairey’s murals are all over the country. In March, he took his influence abroad with an exhibition in Dubai.
Fairey spends most of his time far from home. But for this project, he returned to a place his family has been tied to decades.
Both sets of his grandparents lived in Rock Hill. His grandfather, Charles B. Vail, was the sixth president of Winthrop University; his other grandfather was a prominent surgeon in Rock Hill for almost 40 years. And members of his family live in Rock Hill to this day.
“I’m very excited to paint a mural and exhibit my art in Rock Hill because I grew up spending a lot of time with family in the city and surrounding countryside,” he said in a press release.
Mural Mile Project
Fairey’s work is the sixth installation of Rock Hill’s “Mural Mile” project.
“The ‘Mural Mile’ stresses the need to make art accessible, with murals on multiple buildings throughout the historic Old Town area,” said Katie Quinn, communications and marketing manager for the City of Rock Hill.
So far, five murals have been installed in downtown Rock Hill:
- Osiris Rain’s gigantic mural on the Warehouses on White Street is an explosion of color that brings together an abstract, geometric style and a realistic, lifelike depiction of two women, one holding a blooming flower. Look closely at the shapes, and in blue, against the orange background, the mural reads “ROCK HILL.”
- The “No Room for Racism” mural painted on White Street, outside of Knowledge Perk, the Mercantile and Dust Off Brewery, memorializes Rock Hill’s place in the civil rights movement. The Friendship Nine, who went to jail after staging a sit-in at the segregated McCrory’s lunch counter on Main Street, are depicted in black and white on the last nine letters.
- Artist Garrison Gist, assisted by Frankie Zombie, painted a colorful, geometric piece centering a basketball that reads “Sunset Park.” The mural breathes life to the basketball court in the Sunset Park neighborhood.
- Then there’s the “Dreamer,” mural on the side of the McFadden Building on E. Main Street. Created by artist Darion Fleming, the mural shows a young Black girl drawing a rocket ship, surrounded by the stars and moon -- dreaming of the future.
- And if you’ve walked down Caldwell Street, adjacent to Amelie’s French Bakery, you’ve probably seen the colorful words painted on the asphalt: “Rock Hill For All.” The words were painted by a team of nine artists during the city’s Race Quality Month in March 2021.
‘Eyes open, mind open’
Fairey began painting on Oct. 16 and finished up Monday afternoon.
After spending hours on the lift, Fairey and part of his crew jumped down, sweaty and hungry, and took a break for lunch.
“I’m painting a mural that has a combination of a lot of the themes I like to deal with in my work around peace and harmony mixed with a lot of iconography that has to do with Rock Hill’s history,” he said.
“There’s a reference to the textile industry, the train, the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant, all are going to be woven into this ... other things that I hope just get people talking about ways humans can get along better. My mural celebrates various aspects of Rock Hill’s industrial history while also sharing my philosophy of open-mindedness, creativity, and adaptive disruption to progress into the future.”
When Shepherd stepped down Monday morning, the wall had been transformed into a mix of reds, blues and yellows. And, as promised, it showed bits and pieces of life in Rock Hill, all fitting together. A train, the Coca-Cola logo, the letters “RH,” all against a backdrop of swirling colors, flowers, and a bird in flight.
Perhaps the most striking image is the profile of a woman (common in Shepherd’s work), her head turned as if she herself is viewing the mural.
While only Fairey knows the true meaning -- he’s said in the past that he likes the viewer to form their own opinions -- he’s written a hint across the painting.
“Eyes open, mind open,” it reads.
