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Last week, just as one improbable candidate was being sworn in as leader of the free world, the work of another improbable candidate who played a significant role in getting him there was inducted into the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

You might not know it, but you are already familiar with the work of Shepard Fairey. Fairey is the artist behind the now-iconic, red-white-and-blue image of Barack Obama that looks like a cross between Soviet propaganda and a Warhol silkscreen.

Bearing the inspirational words "Hope" or "Change," the image has emerged as the unofficial logo of the Obama brand. Much as it was once hard to imagine a black president, it is difficult to imagine a less likely choice for presidential portraitist.

Thirty-eight year-old, L.A.-based Frank Shepard Fairey is a skater punk street artist, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, whose former claim to fame was plastering streets from Portland to Tokyo with stickers of Andre the Giant with the word "OBEY."

And yet so iconic has Fairey's portrait become, when I was in Washington for the inauguration, I saw droves of tourists lined up to pose beside it, right down the hall from such Americana as the Smithsonian's famous unfinished portrait of George Washington.

A presidential portrait artist of the 21st century, Fairey is so well-practised in the subversive arts of wheat-pasting, tagging and graffiti that he has been arrested 14 times - most recently during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where Barack Obama was busy asserting his own constitutional rights by becoming that party's first presidential candidate of colour.

To observe that Fairey has become a star as a result would be an understatement. Along with hanging in the Smithsonian, Fairey's Obama has graced the cover of Time magazine's Person of the Year issue, has been spoofed by satirical mags such as Mad and Heeb, and adorns the current cover of Esquire. Just like his subject, the artist has become a celebrity: The night before the inauguration, Fairey hosted a party in D.C. along with R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and actress Heather Graham.

In the past month, he has been interviewed everywhere from NPR to Inside Edition. So hot a property has Fairey become that Saks Fifth Avenue tapped him to redesign their shopping bags and billboards (for which he came up with a similarly compelling, neo-Soviet realist "Want It" campaign). On Feb. 6, his first solo museum show opens at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.

And yet what Fairey will no doubt be remembered for is his unsolicited, one-man effort to support a candidate whose idealism mirrored his own. Indeed, Fairey's limited-edition Obama posters, which he issued almost weekly during the campaign, and sold for as little as $45 to cover his costs through his Obeygiant website, now fetch thousands on eBay, according to a site called obamaart.com that tracks the works' value. (To give you an idea of where prices are headed, Def Jam founder Russell Simmons, who boasts an original Fairey of his own, hosted a fundraiser during the campaign where a stencilled "Hope" poster fetched more than $60,000.) Thanks to a vigorous Obama swag industry (one of the only vigorous industries these days), Fairey's hopeful, change-committed Obama has been copied on buttons, T-shirts, hoodies, baseball caps, mouse-pads, even condoms. At a website called Obamicon.me, you can even make a Fairey of yourself. All of which doesn't seem to trouble the street artist, who has never made a profit from his efforts (when Fairey confessed as much on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert told him that he was insane).

As Fairey - whose artwork was never officially sanctioned by the campaign because of its whiff of illegality, yet probably played a significant role in getting Obama's message across - explained to the press in several recent high-profile interviews, "I don't do any of it for the money." The key benefit, in his opinion, was to have his man in the White House.

How fitting for this President, whose unprecedented reliance on democratic, grassroots organization and unconventional means of communication got him where he is, to be immortalized by a street artist. The parallels between the idealistic creator and his idealistic subject bounce back and forth like an infinitely reflective mirror image. What ultimately elevates Fairey's Obama to museum status, however, goes beyond likeness to become an expression of the shared conviction between this new leader and those he has inspired.

kvonhahn@globeandmail.com