Gauntlet Gallery
What is Shepard Fairey’s piece called “Salad Days (First Edition)”?
Artist Statement
Salad Days. 18 x 24 inches. Screenprint on cream Speckle Tone paper. Signed by Shepard Fairey. Numbered edition of 550. $50. "The Obey Salad Days print was created to accompany the Salad Days exhibition, a selection of my art from 1989-1999 at the Cranbrook Art Museum. My show is a companion show to Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics, 1976-1986 and Salad Days is meant to show the influence of punk on my early work’s aesthetics, concepts, and methods. The Salad Days print features a recreation of the paste-up I made in the process of refining the Obey Star Icon in January 1996. I did not learn how to use a Mac until late 1997, so the star image was created by hand using a star window cut out of paper to choose the right cropping for the Icon Face I had just illustrated. I like the idea of revealing the low-fi techniques that drove punk and my early career (and still do!)." -Shepard
Summary
Salad Days (First Edition) is a 2018 Shepard Fairey screenprint, 18 x 24 inches on cream Speckle Tone paper, published by Obey Giant. It is signed and numbered in an edition of 550, released at $50. Fairey created it to accompany the Salad Days exhibition of his 1989-1999 art at the Cranbrook Art Museum, a companion to a punk-graphics show. The print recreates the hand-made paste-up he used in 1996 to refine the Obey Star icon, using a paper star window to crop the Icon Face before he learned to use a Mac. It celebrates the low-fi, punk-rooted techniques of his early career.
Why It Matters
Salad Days is among the most explicitly self-documenting prints in Fairey's catalog, recreating the actual 1996 hand-made paste-up he used to refine the Obey Star icon. As he explains, he had not yet learned to use a Mac, so he chose the right cropping for the Icon Face with a star window cut from paper, and the print deliberately reveals those low-fi techniques. That makes the work a primary-source artifact of how one of the most recognizable icons in street art was actually built. Created for the Salad Days exhibition of his 1989-1999 work at the Cranbrook Art Museum, paired with a punk-graphics show, it foregrounds the influence of punk on his early aesthetics, concepts, and methods. For collectors, this is unusually meaningful: rather than a finished icon, it shows the process and the punk ethos behind it. The edition of 550 keeps it accessible, but its value is documentary, connecting a buyer directly to the origin of the Obey Star. Within a collection it anchors an OBEY-iconography grouping and serves as the conceptual key to understanding how Fairey's signature mark came together.
Collector Perspective
Salad Days appeals to collectors fascinated by process, origins, and the OBEY brand's construction. Its recreation of the 1996 Obey Star paste-up gives it narrative depth that rewards display with context, and its accessible original price and edition of 550 make it attainable. The 18 x 24 format frames easily and pairs naturally with other OBEY-iconography editions, where it functions as the back-story piece explaining the icon's creation. It suits both committed Fairey collectors and design-minded buyers interested in how identities and icons are made. Provenance-focused buyers will value that it is signed and numbered through Obey Giant and tied to a documented museum exhibition. It is best understood as a story-rich anchor for an OBEY-themed collection rather than a high-end centerpiece.
Historical Context
Salad Days is a deliberate look back at Fairey's formative decade. Made for the museum exhibition of the same name covering his 1989-1999 work at Cranbrook, and paired with a punk-graphics show, it frames punk as the driving influence on his early aesthetics, concepts, and methods. By recreating the 1996 hand-made paste-up behind the Obey Star, it documents the pre-digital, low-fi craft that preceded his global recognition, the same DIY ethos he revisits in other 2018 origin pieces. It sits among related OBEY-iconography editions that mine his early period and the construction of his core imagery. As an established artist reflecting on his roots, Fairey uses this print to make the process visible, giving it lasting value as a record of how the OBEY icon, and his career, took shape.
FAQ
What does Salad Days depict?
Per Fairey, it recreates the paste-up he made in January 1996 while refining the Obey Star icon. Before he learned to use a Mac, he used a star window cut from paper to choose the right cropping for the Icon Face he had just illustrated.
What exhibition is it tied to?
It accompanies the Salad Days exhibition of Fairey's art from 1989-1999 at the Cranbrook Art Museum, a companion to a punk-graphics show. The print highlights punk's influence on his early aesthetics, concepts, and methods.
What are its specifications?
It is an 18 x 24 inch screenprint on cream Speckle Tone paper, signed by Shepard Fairey and numbered in an edition of 550. It was published by Obey Giant in 2018 at an original release price of $50.
Why is it significant to OBEY collectors?
It documents the low-fi, hand-made process behind the Obey Star icon, making it a primary-source artifact about how one of Fairey's most recognizable images was constructed before he worked digitally.
Related Works
About the Artist
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970, Charleston, South Carolina) is an American street artist, graphic designer, and activist, and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. His 1989 “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker grew into the global OBEY GIANT campaign — an ongoing experiment in propaganda, obedience, and visual culture. He reached worldwide recognition with the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama, now held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Across screen prints, stencils, murals, and collage, Fairey channels propaganda aesthetics toward themes of peace, justice, environmentalism, and civil rights. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and LACMA.