A Love Letter to the City
Stephen Powers was born and raised in Philadelphia, where in 1984, as an overgrown sixteen-year-old, he started writing the name ESPO around his neighborhood and eventually around the world. Powers stopped writing graffiti and tending bar in 1999 to dedicate himself to art full time. He was a Fulbright scholar in 2007, using the grant to paint in the streets of Dublin and Belfast. His work has been shown at the Venice and Liverpool Biennials and appears continuously in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally. He lives and works in New York City and makes art and hand-painted signs out of his Philadelphia and Brooklyn ICY Signs shops, where "perfection is standard, mistakes cost extra."