A few blocks away from the vintage Macy’s parking garage that Steve Powers dressed up a few months ago, lies this newly decorated building at 119 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The NYC subway map inspired piece is entitled the “Train To Always” on his website, and features stops we’ve all been to before: “NOPE,” “MEH,” and “MAYBE,” among others. A guy who answered the phone at the hero shop below it and didn’t really feel like talking, said the landlord gave Powers permission to do the work.

Artist Steve Powers (formerly ESPO) is working on a “Love Letter” to Brooklyn on the giant, ugly banks of a giant, ugly parking lot for the giant, ugly Fulton Mall. Read more »

Artist Steve Powers is returning to his hometown with an ambitious new project, “Love Letter.” The series of murals covering 50 walls and rooftops will be form letter of love visible for 20 blocks on the Market-Frankford elevated train line. The message will not only come from the neighborhood but be painted by residents as well. With project collaborators at the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Powers is opening a sign making school to teach and employ young adults on the project’s construction beginning in August.

Paper magazine’s Kim Hastreiter recently asked a group of artists and ad makers to fix America’s image: “How would you make people love us again? … How could you project our future to our citizens? If America had a new ad campaign, what would it look like?” The group of “visual communicators,” including Steve Powers, Shepard Fairey and Ron English, responded with some interesting concepts for “Rebranding America,” a sample of which you can preview in the gallery above.

This past Friday, “The New Yorkers,” an exhibition of several dozen five borough based-artists opened at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen. Curated by Todd James, also known as REAS, the show is self-admittedly difficult to categorize: “A common denominator for the city, the artists and the works is defiance against generalizations and predictability.” In this vain, James brings together everything from paintings to installations by artists such as FUTURA, KAWS, Barbara Kruger, Steve Powers, Aurel Schmidt, and Dash Snow. Click the images above for a selection from the online preview.

For those who can’t get served at Steve Powers’ Church of the Open Tab, this video provides a nice view of the work on display. Famed cartoonist and sign painter Justin Green, one of the artists who contributed to the production, also describes the cooperative work that went into putting 2 Fists of Iron and a Bottle of Beer together. |TWBE|