The Look Book for OBEY X Pavement Licker: Call and Response was shot in Faversham

Cult art zine Pavement Licker has collaborated with streetwear icons OBEY to create a unique range of clothing, accessories and, of course, a limited-edition zine.

Back in 2003, now Faversham-based graphic artist James-Lee Duffy (@jamesleeduffy) and writer Josh Jones (@joshjoshjones) started a zine to promote fresh talent alongside more established names in the underground art world and it was fiercely independent. Nearly 20 years later it’s still going strong and Pavement Licker (@pavementlicker) has grown into something much bigger, while still retaining that original focus.

Known for their extensive contacts in the art world, Pavement Licker has continued to promote artists to a global audience through the ‘zine, collaborations and curated art shows. They even opened up the work of their favourite artists to a whole new audience on the labels of an eponymous beer created with the brewery Verdant.

The Pavement Licker team said: ”This is the OBEY X Pavement Licker: Call and Response collection and zine. It’s our questions, Shepard Fairey’s answers, and what happens when he gives us a bunch of OBEY artwork to put in the Pavement Licker blender.

“Seriously, Shepard, along with Mike and Steve Ternosky from OBEY Clothing (@obeyclothing), sent us about 16GB of their OBEY photos and artwork files and let James do whatever he liked with it.

“We called the project ‘Call and Response’ because the zine was the backbone of it all. We sent Shepard some slightly inane questions and he sent us back his answers with all that artwork”

Artist Shepard Fairey (@obeygiant) said: “Some questions ARE black and white. Pavement Licker and I see eye to eye on the answers to the questions of whether to be conformist or irreverent, passive or creative, elitist or accessible. Pavement Licker demonstrates that one colour can answer some very important questions.”

Campaign Photographer: Dan Wilton. For the full collection click HERE

INTERVIEW: Josh Jones and James-Lee Duffy of Pavement Licker

What’s it like collaborating with a cult, iconic brand?

It’s a pretty big deal for us. Duffy’s a proper fan boy and grew up being a massive fan of Shepard Fairey and his Posse, although this was pre-Internet so had only read about him in magazines and books. Duffy remembers seeing his work for the first time out in the wild when he and five friends did a road trip around California back in 1996, and got all excited seeing his work all over the streets and walls of San Francisco.

How did it come about? Was it all through the zine and is Shepard Fairey a fan (of course he is, but we have to ask)?

Josh interviewed Shepard back in 2012 and gave him a bunch of Pavement Lickers. He dug what we did and we stayed in contact. Since then Shepard has very kindly sent us stuff many times for different issues of the zine.
Duffy was out in LA at the beginning of 2020 just before the pandemic kicked in. While he was there we’d asked Shepard if he’d be part of our Pressing Matter charity exhibition where we got artists to paint on rare vinyl. Shepard was up for it and Duffy dropped off a copy of The Clash’s London’s Calling at his studio. As you can imagine Duffy was like a kid in a candy store and spent hours hanging out and talking all things punk, zines and sub-cultures. Later that same trip, Duffy hooked up with his good friend Mike Ternosky who, with his brother, Steve run the OBEY Clothing brand. Mike took him to the OBEY ‘Factory’ for the royal tour. This planted the seed of doing a project together.
Duffy was like “we should collaborate” and they were like, “yes we totally should.” And here we are.

How did you decide upon the designs with the team at Obey? Will it all be clothing and accessories or the zine also?

After getting the zine signed off by Shepard and the team, Duffy started to deconstruct the illustrations they’d sent us and the design process started — we sent them stuff, they fed back on their favourite pieces and we worked a bit more on those. The project originally started as a small collaboration drop but soon grew into something much bigger i.e. a global collection. We have created a hoodie, crew neck sweat, three tee’s, a tote and a super limited edition zine.

What’s the story behind the title Call & Response?

Josh, Duffy and Mike were on a Zoom call and, let’s be honest, what with it being a Friday and the time difference between London and LA being what it is meant Duffy and Josh were of course a couple of pints in. Josh came up with the idea of sending Shepard questions and us turning his response into a limited edition zine. The OBEY guys loved it. Once we’d done the Q&A with Shepard, the team sent us, a quite frankly ludicrous, 16GB of photos and artwork. Duffy put them all into the Pavement Licker blender and created bespoke type, illustrations and logos with our signature style.

Pavement Licker has been collaborating with some amazing people over the past couple of years, do you even have more lined up?

We are working on a number of projects including something with the new Laz Emporium on Lexington Street and we are going to self-publish a book about the world famous Dragon Bar, which was on Leonard Street and was arguably the epicentre of the so called ‘street art explosion’ earlier this century. It’ll be out in the Spring of 2022 (or as soon as Duffy finishes scanning all the photos).

To see our previous interview with Pavement Licker click here