I admire Ai Weiwei for his art and his activism. His art is beautiful in form, and in function embodies the principles of populism and social consciousness I aspire to in my own practice.
I want to be proud of this country, but when aspects of our policy don't align with my ethics, I want to protest them and try to change them.
In the case of the Obama poster, I was just exercising my First Amendment rights - and my free speech is exercised visually. People who want to talk or write in order to share an opinion about Obama can do that, but when I want to say what I think about him, I need to make a portrait.
Tim Armstrong is a good friend.
I hoped that Obama would be a delivery vehicle for change on issues I care about, but I never expect one politician to be the solution to the diverse array of issues I care about.
For me, there has always been a disconnect with the sort of elitist structure of the high-art world - and my distaste for that is at odds with my feeling that art should aspire to do great things.
I've never really considered myself just a street artist. I consider myself a populist.
When I made my Obey logo, it was 100 percent an homage to Barbara Kruger's work and 0 percent had anything to do with Supreme.
On the street, people aren't bashful. They will say if they like something or if they think it sucks.
The problem with copyright enforcement is that when the parameters aren't incredibly well defined, it means big corporations, who have deeper pockets and better lawyers, can bully people.
If I spend time conceiving and making a piece of art, and somebody else sees that it has market value and replicates it in order to steal part of my market, then that's not cool.
Propaganda has a negative connotation, which it partially deserves, but I think there is some propaganda that is very positive. I feel that if you can do something that gets people's attention, then maybe they'll go and find out more about the person.
I do think that copyrights and intellectual property are important - it's important to be able to keep people from making verbatim copies of a particular creation that could somehow hurt the creator.
The most important thing about intellectual property vs. creative expression is that copyright law was created not to stifle creativity but to encourage creativity.
If any group wants to not be disenfranchised, then understanding that there's going to be a learning curve for people who have disenfranchised them is important.
I'm not going to be intimidated by people or identity politics. I think that's a dead end.
Street art, of course, is political, because it's illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.
I think 'punk' should really be defined as paving your own way creatively and by defying any sort of orthodoxy or commercial pressure.
I try to make my clothing line an entry point for discovering the substance of the rest of my work.
I've been making pieces dealing with environmental issues at least since 2004; I mean, I did stuff for the Sierra Club and the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge even back in the 1990s. But somewhere a little after 2004, Hummer hits me up. I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?'
