Shepard Fairey, partnering with LGBT grassroots organization FAIR, debuted a selection of the 100 celebrity-customized Defend Equality Love Unites posters designed to raise awareness — and funds — for the fight for marriage equality.
Thursday night’s event featured the redesigned creations from the likes of Tegan Quin, Virginia Madsen, Dustin Lance Black (Milk), Matt Groening, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Renee Zellweger and many more on display at the Andaz in West Hollywood.
The “Defend Equality Love Unites” poster has become the “image of the movement,” said Fairey, who also designed President Obama’s famous “Hope” campaign poster.
“I never thought Prop. 8 would pass but when it did I just thought, ‘I have to do anything I can to say that I support marriage equality,” said Fairey, who also served as DJ for part of the evening. “I support equal rights on many fronts, and this is a very important one. I was contacted by FAIR and it was something I was going to do anyway, so I just made something and we plugged it all
in and it took off and has become a pretty pervasive image for the movement. I’m pretty happy about that.”
The artist, whose collection of 100 customized prints are currently up for bid, said having stars like Robert De Niro and Julia Roberts take part of this fundraiser and redesign his work was “pretty surreal.”
“It’s incredible because I really love collaboration and connection so the idea that all these people that are sort of heroes of mine would be interacting with my work, that alone is pretty surreal,” said the artist, who attended the event with his wife, Amanda. “It’s just very cool that so many great people are supporting the cause. My work they may like or not like, but to use it as a vehicle to show their support I think is really powerful.”
Asked whose prints he’d love to have in his living room, the artist and civil rights advocate went the fan route: “I’m going to skip right over aesthetic criteria, and just say Scarlett Johansson or Nata
lie Portman just because they’re so lovely.”
Meanwhile, guests attending the launch party included The L Word’s Daniela Sea, who stressed the importance of LGBT equality beyond marriage rights.
“I was talking with my dad a few weeks ago and he was saying that he and his partner — my dad’s gay — haven't been able to get the same retirement benefits — since they’re getting ready to retire — as straight couples do,” Sea said. "These are two people who have worked for the public their whole lives — one’s a nurse in the cancer center and my dad works with autistic kids. These are people who have been working for the good of humanity, who have been paying their taxes and as they retire as domestic partners they should have the same benefits as everybody else and they don’t.”
Sea, touching on the way The L Wordended, joked that she thinks groundbreaking lesbian drama should “become a daytime soap opera and they should have just gone for that if that’s what they were going for.”
“That would be fun! Imagine housewives home at noon and they’re watching a lesbian soap opera,” said Sea, who is working on the father-daughter story “Heterophobia” that she plans to direct and star in. “(Max) would be a happy homemaker. After he had the kid, I think he’d be Mr. Mom. Or Mr. Dad. Or Mrs. Dad. Or whatever. He’d be happy tranny guy who is a homemaker. I think he’d be making pies and inviting everybody over.”
Others mingling at the launch party included New Moon’s Anna Kendrick, who decorated one of the prints with friends.
“I think it’s a little sad that we even have to be here right now but it’s such a no brainer for me to come out. I think (the lack of marriage rights is) pretty upsetting that it’s not just California but in my home state of Maine,” said Kendrick, who has been generating Oscar buzz for her performance opposite George Clooney for the upcoming Up in the Air. “There’s rationality and there’s intolerance and those are the only two sides to this issue.”
Queer as Folk’s Peter Paige may have best summed the evening up best: “It’s moments like this that are turning the tide, we’re making it happen,” he said. “In 20 years this will be looked at as an amazing moment in time, and ‘Isn’t that quaint, look what they had to do back then.’ I really believe we’re changing the world and if I can cut up a Shepard Fairey print and contribute to the cause, I’m happy to do it.”
Customized prints from Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, Anne Hathaway, Olivia Wilde, Chelsea Handler, Paige, Margaret Cho, Diablo Cody, Kirsten Dunst, Lance Bass, Lynda Carter, Martina Navratilova, Gavin Newsom, Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michaels, Arianna Huffington are up for bid through Dec. 9.
Proceeds raised from the online auction benefits grassroots organizations fighting for marriage equality in California and across the country.
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Photo Credit: Berliner Studio/BEImages
