Steve Powers has been a charismatic figure in both New York’s art and graffiti world throughout the past 20 years. Seen all over the streets of Philadelphia, New York, and Brooklyn, his flat top and name have been synonymous throughout these street scenes since the mid-90s. However, after ESPO’s success for several years, Steve decided to step away from the shadow lands of graffiti and establish himself as a sign painter. In this episode of Art Talk, VICE Â accompany Steve to explore his new project “Love Letter to Brooklyn” in the heart of downtown at the old Macy’s parking garage. They get a behind the scenes look into his life as ESPO, how his work has developed over the years, and his life as a dad.
street art
PANIC ROOM
Tilt :
The hotel Au vieux panier asked me to design a room, I first told them that I wasn’t interested doing just decoration in the room but I wanted to create something that will look more like an installation. I thought about it also as a huge canvas where I needed to think about the composition and play with the empty white part of the room to accentuate more the idea of Chaos on the other part. Then I asked my friend Tober who gat a great old school style for tags, Grizz who is also the man behind the camera and Don Cho who is a Hip Hop singer from Marseille but who used to be a tagger from my home town Toulouse. It took one week to do the whole thing cause the idea was to exaggerate what you can usually see in some abandoned places. Too much tags, too much drips, too much sentences, too much throw ups … What I also wanted to show is that people can appreciate any type of graffiti, even the more basic, it’s just a matter of point of view …