STEVEN POWERS a.k.a. ESPO DOES DUBLIN

more pics in the read more and a little info on espo too






ESPO (Stephen J. Powers) is a New York City graffiti artist. His name is an acronym for "Exterior Surface Painting Outreach."Powers is from Philadelphia's Overbrook neighborhood; he graduated from Robert E. Lamberton High School in 1987 and took classes at the University of the Arts. He moved to New York in 1995. He painted on storefront grates in Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant, TriBeCa and the South Bronx, covering the entire grate with white or silver paint and writing his name over it.Powers painted in daylight, wearing street clothes; he told the New York Times in 1999 that when passerby asked what he was doing he would tell them, "I'm with Exterior Surface Painting Outreach, and I'm cleaning up this gate"; the official-sounding name was enough to ward most people off. Powers targeted shops that appeared to be out of business and grates that were already heavily vandalized, describing his graffiti as a public service. In 1999 he said that he had painted around 70 grates. In December 1999 Powers was arrested for vandalism while he was in the midst of organizing a protest against Rudolph Giuliani; he charged that the arrest was politically motivated. A New York Times editorial criticized the Giuliani administration for its secrecy in the case (while dismissing Powers as "a noodge and self-promoter, one of those deliberately annoying characters whom most of us could do without"). He stated in 2000 that he had given up graffiti; his studio art has sold for as much as $20,000. He is the author of a book on graffiti's history, "The Art of Getting Over," published by St. Martin's Press in 1999. He has also designed clothing for Marc Ecko, Nike, and Calvin Klein. He is living and working in Dublin on a Fulbright Scholarship.