The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Graffiti Love Letter to Syracuse

In April, I featured A Love Letter For You — sign painter and street artist Steve Powers’s wonderful ongoing graffiti love letter to Philadelphia, stretching across 50 building facades along 20 blocks. Now, Powers is back with another love letter, this time for the Near West Side community of Syracuse, NY.

I made a very adult version of what graffiti is to me — and that is, a vehicle for projecting larger ideas.” ~ Steve Powers

Powers walked around the Near West Side neighborhood and all of Syracuse, talking to people about what they love and hate about their community in order to unearth the basic human truths that would inform and inspire his artwork.

What makes Powers’ work particularly noteworthy is that it bends the definition of street art in a number of ways — it isn’t uncommissioned and illegal, done under the radar of city authority, but rather sanctioned and embraced by the city in a collaborative context; nor is it the singular voice of a sole artist, but rather the choir of a community channelled through the artist’s creative point of view.

As far as I’m concerned, every city needs a love letter. Bravo, Steve.


Published October 7, 2010

https://www.themarginalian.org/2010/10/07/steve-powers-graffiti-love-letter-to-syracuse/

BP

www.themarginalian.org

BP

PRINT ARTICLE

Filed Under

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)