Shepard Fairey Proud Parents
Edition of 46/400|18" x 24"
About the work
About This Piece
Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art
Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Proud Parents — Damaged Stencil Series
2017 Offset Lithograph · #46/400 · Hand-Signed & Numbered · One of Eight in the Set ★ Originally Sold ONLY as a Complete 8-Print Set — Individual Damaged Stencil Series prints are scarce on the secondary market. From Fairey's landmark "DAMAGED" exhibition at Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, December 2017. What You Are Getting
This is Shepard Fairey's Proud Parents — one of the most sardonic and compositionally dense prints in the 2017 "Damaged Stencil Series," hand-numbered #46/400 and signed by the artist. Released exclusively in December 2017 as part of an 8-print set accompanying Fairey's landmark solo exhibition DAMAGED at Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles, individual prints from this series were never sold separately at retail. Each one on the secondary market comes from a collector who parted with the complete set — making single examples genuinely rare.
The image appears at first glance to be a scene of domestic celebration: a well-dressed mid-century couple, beaming, bending tenderly over what a new parent might lovingly cradle. But Fairey's substitution is the entire point — what the couple cradles with such pride and devotion is not a newborn child but a U.S. Treasury briefcase, embossed with the official Treasury Department seal: the bald eagle clutching a shield emblazoned with a dollar sign. The cursive text above them reads "Congratulations / Proud Parents" — as if the accumulation of wealth, of state-sanctioned capital, is the ultimate offspring of the American dream.
The composition is layered with deliberate collage chaos beneath the central figures. "BLOOD" is stamped in bold gothic type across fragments of religious text — passages referencing devotion, faith, and the love of God — creating an explicit collision of spiritual language and the violence of economic systems. Record store ephemera ("Stereo," "HIGH FIDELITY," "SALFY'S") bleeds in from the left margin, evoking a consumer culture where everything — faith, family, music — has been flattened into commerce. Sneakers litter the ground beneath the couple's feet. A suburban house sits half-submerged in the background, nearly invisible beneath the collage weight. The OBEY Giant face appears in the lower left, watching.
Print Details Artist Shepard Fairey (OBEY) Title Proud Parents Series Damaged Stencil Series (8-print set) Year 2017 (December release) Medium Offset lithograph — single-color black ink on cream Speckletone paper Colors Black on cream — monochrome; balanced mix of light and dark ground areas Size 18" × 24" (46 × 61 cm) Edition Number #46/400 — hand-numbered in pencil (confirmed from photograph, lower left) Signature Hand-signed by Shepard Fairey in pencil (lower right, confirmed from photograph) Distressed Borders Ragged, worn printed edges — intentional "damaged stencil" design elements, not paper damage Exhibition "DAMAGED" — Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, December 2017 Publisher Obey Giant / Studio Number One Original retail $160 for the complete 8-print set — sold out at release; never sold individually Condition Excellent — crisp ink on cream paper; unframed, stored flat
Decoding the Composition — What You're Actually Looking At
Fairey sources his imagery from the visual vernacular of 1950s American idealism — the same advertising photography, government pamphlets, and magazine illustrations that sold postwar prosperity as moral virtue. The couple in Proud Parents is lifted from that world, their expressions of warmth and pride drawn directly from the era's propaganda of the nuclear family as national achievement. Fairey's intervention is surgical: replace the baby with a government-stamped money box, and the image becomes something both funny and deeply uncomfortable. The congratulations still make sense. That's the joke — and the critique.
"BLOOD" stamped over religious text is Fairey at his most confrontational. The word disrupts the devotional passages beneath it — interrupting scripture about love, faith, and the Most High with a single blunt word that means both family lineage and violent consequence. In Fairey's visual lexicon, it asks: what is the blood being spilled for? What is the faith being directed toward? The record store collage — "HIGH FIDELITY," "Stereo" — grounds the composition in consumer culture's promises of authenticity and feeling-at-a-price. The suburban house in the background is barely visible, almost dissolved, as if the dream of home has already receded into texture.
Key Visual Elements — Confirmed from Photographs What appears in the composition: Central figures: Mid-century couple (man in suit with floral bouquet; woman) bending lovingly over a U.S. Treasury briefcase bearing the official eagle/dollar-sign seal · Text (upper): Cursive script reading "Congratulations / Proud Parents" · Store signage: "SALFY'S" (partial) and "HIGH FIDELITY" — record store ephemera · Text (lower): "BLOOD" in bold gothic type overlaid on columns of religious/devotional text · Record labels: "Stereo" Columbia Records-era label fragments · Background: Suburban house structure; OBEY Giant face partially submerged in lower collage · Lower ground: Sneakers/footwear scattered beneath the figures · Borders: Dramatic torn/ragged edges (upper and left margin) — printed design elements, not physical damage
The Complete Damaged Stencil Series — All 8 Prints
Each print 18" × 24", offset lithograph on cream Speckletone, edition of 400 — released December 2017:
· Natural Springs — Woman in headscarf holding dripping lotus; oil derrick warning symbol · Peace Guard 2 — Uniformed youth saluting a radiant dollar-sign sun · Learn to Obey — Figure in uniform beneath propaganda-style text · Freedom of Choice — Figure surrounded by consumer goods ★ Proud Parents — Couple cradling a U.S. Treasury briefcase as if newborn; "BLOOD" over religious text; record store collage (This Print — #46/400) · Printing Press — Typography and press imagery · My Florist Is a Dick — Satirical consumer culture critique · Sinking Liberty — Statue of Liberty partially submergedAbout the DAMAGED Exhibition (2017) Fairey on the series: The Damaged Stencil Series was produced for Fairey's largest-ever solo exhibition, DAMAGED, at Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles in December 2017 — his own gallery space. The show was a direct response to what Fairey saw as the accelerating erosion of democratic institutions, environmental protections, and public truth in the post-2016 political climate. "DAMAGED is an honest diagnosis," he said, "but diagnosis is the first step to recognizing and solving problems." The entire series abandons his signature red/cream/black palette and returns to raw black-and-white — the visual register of street stencils, underground leaflets, and urgent political ephemera.
About the Artist — Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Born 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina, Shepard Fairey studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and launched his career with the Andre the Giant Has a Posse wheat-paste campaign — one of the first viral street art movements, which evolved into the global OBEY brand. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, MoMA New York, LACMA, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His 2008 Obama HOPE poster remains one of the most reproduced political images of the 21st century. Proud Parents represents Fairey at his most satirically precise — a single image that dismantles the mythology of the American dream with the swap of one prop for another.
What Is Included
- Original Shepard Fairey Proud Parents offset lithograph, Damaged Stencil Series, 2017
- Hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey (lower right — confirmed from photograph)
- Hand-numbered #46/400 in pencil (lower left — confirmed from photograph)
- Single-color black offset on cream Speckletone paper — unframed, stored flat
- Gauntlet Gallery digital provenance documentation
Shipping & Handling Professional packing. Full insurance. UPS delivery.
Shipped via UPS in a rigid flat-pack mailer with acid-free tissue interleaving, cardboard backing boards, and foam corner protection. Full insurance included. Tracking provided on all orders.
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Every print leaves us in the same condition it arrived. Zero damage record.
Complete the Damaged Stencil Series — Gauntlet Gallery We currently have multiple prints from the 2017 Damaged Stencil Series available, including Natural Springs (#83) and Peace Guard 2 (#84). If you're assembling the complete 8-print set, message us — buying multiple prints from one seller means one shipping charge and one trusted source. We also carry a broader selection of Shepard Fairey prints across all eras, plus Banksy, Death NYC, and signed music collectibles. Add us to your Saved Sellers. Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art & Collectibles Since 2012 · View All Listings
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Few contemporary artists have bridged underground culture and institutional recognition as effectively as Shepard Fairey. Emerging from skate and punk subcultures with the original Obey Giant campaign, he built a visual language rooted in propaganda aesthetics, bold iconography, and political commentary.
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