Soldier Star Brown

[Bobm]

I think the folks on this site will find this story interesting....my long ago interaction with Shepard Fairey and how I ended up owning one of the more rare of his '90's prints.

I was working with a small film production company in Minneapolis in the late-1990''s. We were making music videos and found ourselves to be rather successful...in spite ourselves.

Shepard was doing a show at Ox Op at Grumpy's Bar in downtown Minneapolis. Someone I work with met him at his art opening and invited him over to our office. He stopped in the next day and we all hung around for a little while. He was broke and needed bus fare back to LA, so he promised to send us posters for each $25 we contributed to his ride home. I threw in $50 and others contributed various amounts. About a month after his visit, a poster tube showed up at the office with a pile of posters. We all went through the pile and picked our favorites.

I ended up with Soldier Star and Korean Soldier. I remember one of the other guys ended up with a set of AK-47 posters. I don't remember what else was in the pile.

I brought mine home, and for reasons unknown to me now, I stored them flat with some other posters, and then I forgot about them.

My first son was born soon after, and 20 years later asked me if I'd ever heard of Shepard Fairey. I went up into the attic where I still had the posters, took them out and was saw them for the first time in 20 years. One was a Soldier Star Brown.

I've included photos of the signature. I'm not 100% sure it matches that era, so I'm guessing Shepard might have had a pile of unsold, unused posters at his studio, signed them and then sent them to us. That might explain why this one is an AP.

I've nosed around this site and I think there are two others known to exist. I guess this will now make three.

Please don't ask me to sell it. My 20-something-aspiring-artist-son has dibs on it when I die. You'll have to get it from him someday down the road.

Here's a link to photos. I want to apologize for not including the photos in the body of this post. I'm a little lost with how this website works....

https://imgur.com/a/r9PFCLA

[simococo]

Great story and a fantastic print

[bigfuntimeuse]

Are you selling it?