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20 years ago Steve Powers wrote the word ESPO on everything he could find. He’s expanded his vocabulary a bit since then Steve Powers – whether he’d have you believe it or not – is a graffiti writer. In fact, he’s one of the most famous and divisive graffiti writers of his generation, his tag ESPO plastered around New York for the best part of a decade. He’s been criticised and resultantly defamed for being a careerist. He’s even been derided simply for being an outsider, aspiring to transcend the deeply engrained codes of his chosen medium. His art speaks for itself though, defies all criticism, breaks from type and has evolved into one of the most recognisable and evocative styles on the planet. We first heard about ESPO in the 2008 documentary Beautiful Losers which details the rise and rise of a group of young creatives, among them Shepherd Fairey, Ed Templeton, Harmony Korine and, of course, Powers himself. But he surged further into our consciousness last year. The striking murals he created in Philadelphia for the artwork of Kurt Vile’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze album led us to discover that Powers spends a large amount of his time spreading happy messages in enormous letters on buildings, bridges and all manner of outdoor canvases. After a brief stint in installation art his return to the walls is both uplifting and bold. His art sticks a finger up to the increasingly disconnected society, a ‘fuck you’ to the unabashed culture of deprecative humour, and his new book A Love Letter To The City gathers together a selection of photographs of his bold, iconic murals. Crack wanted to know why, when arrogance and irony reigns, Steve Powers spends his time trying to make people smile. He was on endearingly spiky form.
We first came across your work in the documentary Beautiful Losers. At that point you’d decided to go full time in the studio. What brought you back to writing on walls? I stopped writing ESPO in 1999 because I had been writing for 15 years and, being 32 years old, I felt it was time to learn some new skills. So I started making art. I never stopped writing on walls, I just expanded my vocabulary from one word to all of them. Much of that film is about the virtues of ‘selling out’ or at least underground artists monetising their output. I’ve never seen the movie, I thought it was based on the Leonard Cohen book. Today in 2014, I’m painting epiphanies in the basement of the Strand book store on Broadway for free. In 1997, right across Broadway, I painted my first roll down gate, also for free. Is there anything about my career trajectory that would suggest that I am anybody but who I’ve always been? I think that’s true of [artists] Chris [Johanson] and Jo [Jackson] and everybody in that movie, certainly everyone believable and belovable. Words: Billy Black Photography: Adam Wallacavage Lula Rae Matthew-Kuborn