Steve ESPO Powers - The Art of the Prank

Author: Steve ESPO Powers

Stephen Powers was born and raised and Philadelphia, then moved to New York City in 1994. After stints as publisher of On the Go Magazine, author of the book The Art Of Getting Over, and full-time graffiti writer, Powers opened his studio practice in Janurary of 1998. Since then he has shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Deitch Projects, The 49th Venice Biennale, and The Luggage Store in San Francisco. In 2004, he founded the Dreamland Artist Club and partnered with Creative Time to commission over 45 artists to paint signs and rides in Coney Island. His book of pop art short stories, First And Fifteenth, was published by Villard in 2005. He lives and works in Manhattan.

Graffiti, in case anyone missed the point, is a marking on a surface. Graffiti eradication is typically the application of paint over the marking of the surface. In terms of “damage,” there is no evidence that one layer of paint is less destructive than the one beneath it. In the course of painting over graffiti, the eradicators create a unique marking of their own that writers call “buffmarks.” Roll along the highways of LA and see thousands of buffmarks, each as visually compelling as the next and the last, each with a story to tell. Continue reading “Community Service (2002)”