Issue 12
Faile
By Shepard Fairey and Anne KeehnIllustration By Cleon Peterson
This past June, the Brooklyn-based street art collective Faile rented a warehouse in New York City for a four-day art show. The exhibition, called “Nothing Lasts Forever,” was completely bought-out. Total sales exceeded $1 million. This is not unprecedented for street artists— paintings at Banksy’s Los Angeles warehouse show in 2006 reportedly sold at up to $300,000 a pop, and one piece, a truck emblazoned with multiple stencils, sold at $500,000, making total sales well into the millions.
Still, it is not quite accurate to say that Faile follow in the footsteps of others working in the same genre. The collective started out in 1999 as a group of three artists: two men, Patrick McNeil, Patrick Miller and a woman, Aiko Nakagawa. They are recognized as pioneering artists in the scene—although they came at the tail end of the street art boom of the late ‘90s, after artists like Shepard Fairey, whom they cite as an early stylistic influence. What makes Faile distinct in their genre is the intent behind their work. From the beginning, they sought to create art for urban spaces that was neither political nor aggressive.
The first work they put up was a series of female nudes. Both McNeil and Miller were art school students at the time, and to them, nudes were an iconic image of female fertility—a symbol that has been in art throughout history. From the beginning, with Nakagawa in the collective, Faile depicted the female form with a degree of self-reflection and consciousness. Nakagawa departed Faile in 2006, but with their pulp aesthetic and whimsical iconography (lucha libre wrestlers, a little boy nuzzling a bunny, vintage surf imagery), the collective continues to bring romance, escapism and ambiguity to the street art genre.
Who is FAILE?
Miller: Faile is comprised of Patrick McNeil and myself, Patrick Miller. Faile is a collective—or maybe more appropriately, a collaboration. Our collaborative spirit was first realized when we met on the first day of high school in Arizona. McNeil had just moved to Arizona from Canada, and I had moved from Minneapolis when I was seven. It started with us passing sketchbooks back and forth when we were 14 years old.
We had all our art classes together, and we were best friends. Art was always central to our friendship. We both started college in Flagstaff, AZ, at a liberal arts college. We realized fairly quickly that the art program was weak, and we both had waning interest in staying there. McNeil went to study in England, and eventually moved to NYC a few years later. I took time off to work and ultimately ended up at art school in Minneapolis. But an idea of collaborating—of doing something larger and more organized together—was always there.
In 1999 we finally got organized and started what would eventually become Faile. While studying in NYC, McNeil was inspired by seeing the work going on in the streets. At the time, there was very little street art, but the ones who did it brought such energy to it, and it all seemed really new and fresh. Artists like Bast, Shepard Fairey and WK Interact were real inspirations. During this time, McNeil met Aiko Nakagawa, who was from Japan, studying here in the U.S. They both shared a passion for street art, and she seemed like a great fit to what we had been talking about starting.
Meanwhile, both McNeil and myself worked with screen printing in school. We would go between NYC and Minneapolis, collaborating on prints and living in the print labs at our schools. It was a lot of raw creative energy and experimentation—something that I think has always been underlying in our work.
Our first project started under the name Alife. This name came from an old sketchbook collaboration we did years earlier. There was an image of a man walking through a door with Letraset letters above reading “ALIFE.”
When we first started, we noticed that the work on the streets was very aggressive and/or political. We wanted to bring something different to the street—something that was unique. Our first project was of a set of classic female nudes. We felt this idea of using such an iconic symbol of art, beauty and fertility was the best way to introduce our Alife. The work had a life of its own on the street, and something new was being born in the collaboration.
Alife ultimately went on to become Faile, because Alife was coincidentally the name of a store in NYC that was connected to the street art scene. We decided to change the name and it became an anagram of Alife: Faile. To us the name really had a strong significance in the idea of growing from your challenges and the strength one gains in overcoming obstacles.
Aiko [Nakagawa] began focusing on her own career mid-way through 2006, leaving McNeil and myself as the core members to continue on with Faile.
Faile gained fame on the street, and it seemed you earned your way into galleries.
We’ve actually never approached a gallery. We’ve been lucky enough to just have serendipity enter the scene at the right time. But it took some time. The original idea was just to find an outlet for the work we were creating. I don’t think we thought that if we do this, some day we may show in galleries. At least that wasn’t the goal. It was just exciting to do work on the street to get it out there and participate in a world where the art was always challenging and evolving. You’d put something up one day and the next day it was gone, or written on. Or, something new was covering just a bit of it, creating something you never expected. It was just so alive.
We learned a lot from working on the street. It’s probably what informed the way we work more than any other thing. We also photographed a lot and really examined the way things broke down and evolved on the street. This too was very influential in our process.
It has changed now. When we started, there was no Wooster Collective or major street art scene. It was still small enough to count the people doing it on our hands. Now, with the Internet things have really changed. You can start out and do one great thing and find shows and a market for your work. This is great for many artists—but the culture and the motivation was different when we started.
Are there certain parts of the world that are more receptive to your work than others?
It depends on what you mean by “receptive.” Or, more importantly, who you mean. Cities are starting to get buffed like crazy. You could go to Barcelona, Copenhagen, Berlin—places where putting up work was casual and plentiful. But now things are changing. Cities are starting to clean up as more and more areas get gentrified and redeveloped.
But people are receptive all over, more and more. I think as the awareness and appreciation of street art grows, people are more likely to appreciate what these artists do. The fact that they are willing to spend time making great pieces for the street, for everyone to enjoy rather than be placed on a clean white wall for a few to enjoy—it’s a special thing.
What is your process in creating art?
We work similarly to the way DJs make music. We sample different things from newspapers, comics, signage, photos, books, the street, etc. We bring them all together, taking bits from this and pieces from that, and create something new from what was there. We bring these things together to try to convey something we may be going through at the time, or something that we find may have a particular impact on us. We really like working with things that have had a life—that come together from a history of their own to create something new. I think in many ways it’s like being on the street in a busy city. You are overwhelmed with all this information, inundated with sounds and images. At the end of the day, you are left with all these fragments that somehow come together to form a cohesion of experience. I think the process of our work is something akin to this.
We then take all these images that we’ve created and break them down further. We deconstruct these once again and juxtapose them in ways in the process of painting, stenciling, silk screening, finding story within story from the narratives and characters we’ve created.
Why work as a collective rather than individuals? How has your work changed since Aiko Nakagawa’s departure?
Miller: Working as a collaborative force pushes you in a lot of ways. You have the opportunity to take things further than you would individually because you have someone there, sharing the same vision, pushing you and the work forward. You have to be open to it, though. I think that the minute you let ego in, you start to close doors in that process. You can’t get too attached. There are times you may really see something and think it works and fight for it—but then realize, after letting go that accepting another path, that was the better option. Those are special moments. You really learn to trust each other and push the work forward.
From the beginning, there was the idea of working with a more feminine voice. I think the original project of the nudes was a reaction to what was going on with street art at the time. It all seemed male dominated. The idea of bringing something that has been iconic in art from the very beginning—the female nude—was important to us on several levels. We liked that it was a symbol of fertility. We were starting a new project, so this seemed fitting. And seeing that we were working with the name Alife we felt like we captured that idea and energy in a unique way at the time.
So there was always this femininity, and the work carried out from there—no matter who made the imagery.
McNeil: I think having Aiko in the group did always make us consider the feminine point of view. One time, we were working on a series of new prints. They were four prints with the women always in a distressed situation. Aiko got upset and said to us, “Why does the woman always have to be in distress?” That always stuck with me. I think now that she isn’t around anymore I still have that moment in the back of my head when we create new work. We try to think of the power of the feminine voice and how that might shape the idea. But, looking back over all the images, it was always there. Even from the very beginning.
We’ve been working now for eight years and I think have pretty broadly built our language. In regards to women, we want to portray them in the role of beauty and power… Sometimes it makes sense in the context of a piece, sometimes it doesn’t. But, it’s something we’ve tried to be aware of. We’ve always had powerful women in our lives. They’ve been amazing role models and guardians.
More than looking specifically at women as being a focus in our work, [we are looking at] the role of emotion. [When we first started], we were seeing so much that [was] trying to make a point politically or trying to be witty or just plain bold. We were trying to find something… that conveyed emotion—that captured this moment where there was something more happening—that left the viewer room for their own interpretation. Something that played into your heart and let you relate on a more visceral level.
You recently sold out your big warehouse show in New York. Why did you bypass the galleries and rent your own space?
We always wanted to do independent shows that didn’t tie us down to do things a certain way or [limit us to] the gallery’s walls—where we had the freedom to make shows how we think they should be, to get [the audience] out of sterile spaces that don’t have a history or personality.
It is really exciting to see a show in this way. There is this feeling that something comes together for this moment—and if you are there, you see something that people are going to talk about and remember. It is there for four or five days and that’s it. Then, it’s gone.
How do you promote yourself?
We’ve always concentrated on producing “fine art”—on staying focused and pushing the art. There have been some times in the past when we needed to do some commercial work to pay the bills and help support our quest to make art full time. As soon as we were able to let go of doing other projects, we did.
For the last few years, we’ve been really focused, and that’s been great; no commercial projects—just art. It’s pushed us with our work and given us a chance to really start to do bigger shows in the vision we’ve always been working towards. This is what we were always after. It was never about anything more than the simple love of making the work.