'Not guilty'
Fairey pleaded not guilty to both cases and was released on his own recognizance. He will return to Brighton on March 10 for a pretrial hearing and to Roxbury the following day.
Published 21:50, February the 9th, 2009
Timing questioned by artist in arrests
In the hours after suing The Associated Press over a copyright issue related to his iconic Barack Obama “Hope” image, noted street artist Shepard Fairey bristled at arrests made by Boston Police that had him hopping courts yesterday morning.
“I’d rather be doing more productive things with my time,” Fairey said outside Roxbury District Court, the second of two locations where he faced vandalism charges.
Fairey, who was arrested on Friday as he entered an event at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), was charged in Roxbury with placing a series of his “Obey” images on MBTA property at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Newbury Street on Jan. 24.
Before his Roxbury appearance, Fairey was charged in Brighton District Court with placing a poster on an electrical box in Allston in 2000. He was arrested at the scene of that alleged act but never showed up in court the following Monday, according to prosecutors.
Both he and his attorney, Jeff Wiesner, questioned the timing of his latest arrest.
“It’s very unlikely they would’ve done that if it was someone else,” Wiesner said of the arrest Friday, when hundreds of paying patrons were waiting inside the ICA for Fairey’s appearance.
The cross-town arraignments were just part of a day of legal wrangling for Fairey. Earlier, he countersued the AP over the use of the Obama image that he turned into an internationally recognized piece.
“They are suppressing an artist’s freedom of transformative expression,” he said of AP.