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The artist who created President Barack Obama's famous "HOPE" campaign poster pleaded guilty to criminal contempt on Friday in New York City.

Tuesday night, the Coalition for the Homeless holds its 17th annual ArtWalk NY benefit. For many, the highlight of the evening will be the sale of a hand-painted canvas by controversial street artist Shepard Fairey. Check out a picture of "Harmony" and other Fairey works here.

Street artist and controversial graphic designer Shepard Fairey's imagery is being used by Wall Street protesters: using a palate of red, black and beige, the “Hope” artist's designs have been used for an invitation to the Occupation Party, a protest planned in Times Square on Saturday.

After two years of wrangling, the street artist who created the Barack Obama "Hope" campaign poster and the Associated Press have settled competing copyright infringement suits against one other.

A March trial date was set Monday to decide whether the artist who created the Barack Obama "HOPE" image violated The Associated Press' copyright when he based the image on one of the news agency's pictures.

For years now, street art and graffiti have become increasingly mainstream -- and Shepard Fairey's shiny solo exhibit at Deitch Projects in SoHo is certainly evidence of that -- but plenty of smaller galleries around the city still channel the art form's edgy roots.

Manifest Hope exhibition entrance, Georgetown

Pulling into Washington, DC last night by my usual route - Bladensburg Road onto H Street NE - I saw little sign of anything other than a standard (if extra-cold) winter Friday evening in the imperial capital; at least not along the gas-station and fast-food arteries of Northeast, with their intimations of tumbleweed ghetto life in the streets behind. The tale-of-two-cities narrative is familiar and much-repeated in the District, with fairly acute poverty and dereliction stretching into the metaphoric shadow of the Capitol. There's high hope here that a president and first family who are non only African-American, but also longtime city folk, will invest themselves and encourage others to invest, economically and culturally, in these neighborhoods. For the moment, change is coming mostly through gentrification - the H Street corridor, a commercial thoroughfare of black DC before the 1968 riots, is starting to fill in with hipster taverns and yuppie markets - with all the complex issues that that raises.

Detail of a panel by Chicago's Ray Noland