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Steve Powers: From Coney Island to Proverb King

The legendary sign artist talks switching to water-based paint but sticking with Nathan’s hot dogs.
Photo by Paul Glover

Today, Steve Powers will have his first museum opening in New York. Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (To a Seagull), a site-specific installation at the Brooklyn Museum, features Powers’ signature style of emotional one-liners painted so they could seamlessly blend into any American town’s landscape. The Creators Project interviewed the artist formerly known as ESPO while he set up the show with his crew and cracked a few jokes.

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The Creators Project: Did getting the show have to do with Anne Pasternak becoming the new Director of the Brooklyn Museum?

Steve Powers: I’m not sure… I’m not sure I want to give her all the credit. Yeah, it was totally her. She walked in and said, “Oh you’re doing a show on Coney Island? I’m sure you’ve talked to Steve Powers.” And the staff said, “Oh yeah, yeah we’re talking to Steve.” So she invited me to pick a space and I picked the best space in the building. And the problem with this space is that it’s had two recent shows in it that I have to wipe the memory of those two good shows. I don’t even remember who they were so I’m doing a pretty good job. But I had to do something that’s completely different and far exceeds whatever they did.

Well that will obviously happen.

That’s obviously done. We’re polishing the goalpost at this point. You walk into the space and the space is so beautiful and you want it to be about the space. We had a couple of different proposals we were thinking [of doing] but we wanted the signs to advertise the space, not overrule the space.

All the work goes in the corners and to the periphery of this lovely space. And then we have the tower optical viewer. If you have a quarter and 90 seconds you can see stuff up close.

Where did you acquire that optical viewer?

It’s an American company, Tower Optical. Anyone can own one. It was fascinating to find out. It’s a small operation. They make beautiful work—all American made. It’s really ingenious how it works and what they do with it. I’m proud that we’re friends now.

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This is the shit right here. Even upside down this is it. This is my cutting edge right here. [It includes] a New Yorker illustration that they rejected. I just painted on top of it. They went with a photograph.

How long does a piece take you?

This piece took months. I worked on this a little bit at a time until the show momentum picked up and I really started dialing it in. But it started out, the metal was very base black metal. All this stuff is from a wall we painted in Philadelphia in 2009. We were supposed to paint a building, and they didn’t want us to paint the building, so instead of applying paint to a building that you could power wash off, we drilled 275 holes into their beautiful brick wall to affix these metal panels that we painted. We painted a piece on it and it turned out really great and then after three years we ripped it off the building. It sat in my studio in eight-foot chunks for a long time. Then I finally said let’s at least cut it down to 2’ by 2’. So I got them all cut down to 2’ x 2’ and then suddenly I had the idea that I should start painting on these things. Like, let’s see what happens if we apply a little paint on these. And what happens is as soon as you paint it, it gets a really 'found on the street' texture.

Because it’s all scratched up?

It was scratched to begin with. When I got it it was all scratched but it’s got this layered thing that happens with old signs anyway, you know. Sign writers are constantly painting on top of, they’re flipping over, they’re painting on top of old stuff anyway. So there’s a piece in here, this yellow piece in here, is like, God, I think it’s from 2004.

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Photo by Paul Glover

I saw in a VICE video you said someone told you yellow doesn’t sell.

Yellow doesn’t sell, yeah! But you know after I said that in the VICE documentary—shout out to VICE—I sold all the yellow stuff. So now I want to say that the black layered stuff isn’t selling. Doesn’t sell for some reason. Prices start at about $50 grand. Not selling.

It’s never going to sell. No one wants that. All right… sold out.

This is more direct, not layered. I’m trying to paint every one of these little things fast and in one shot.

It reminds me of the Kurt Vile album, Wakin On A Pretty Daze, that you painted a huge mural for.

Totally. What was so funny about the Kurt Vile record was I painted that wall super fast, as fast as I could paint it, like the cops were coming. And I didn’t realize how far it was going to go—I would have spent more time on it. I think it’s kind of funny that we didn’t spend time on it. It’s right that we didn’t spend time on it. It’s how it should have been. We did the right thing with it. These are a lot more considered and thought about. I’ll paint one thing on it then I’ll wait to paint another thing on it.

Are you the person that comes up with all of these tiny moments and sayings within the pieces?

This is all me. This is my life. I have people helping me letter it, stroke it out.

These just come to you? These sweet and timeless sayings?

Hopefully they’re timeless, we’ll see. I start every morning on the train with a piece of paper and I’m drawing. I’m just writing. I’m just rambling with a pen as I ramble my way to work. The stuff that still makes sense a day or two later jumps into a painting. Sometimes I know right away… sometimes I know immediately.

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How do you feel signage defines a place?

It’s funny you ask because there is a tradition all across America, as you get into the smaller towns, there’s one sign writer that does all the signs in that town. It’s kind of amazing. It happened to me when I was out in Kutztown earlier this weekend. We went past one town where I was like, this guy painted everything in this town. We saw a sign shop and it was totally closed because that’s what sign writers do—they have shops but they never open them. It’s always dark in there, they’re trying to get work done. ICY [Signs] is at least always open. People have this perception that we’re always closed. When we had the shop in Coney Island we never opened it. You couldn’t get us to open it. Creative Time would have to come down—Creative Time sponsored the sign shop—and they’d have to tell us they were coming or we weren’t going to open the shop, you know. That’s the way we knew sign shops worked.

This was what the whole show was about. When we started in Coney Island we spent a summer there painting signs for the businesses and the rides and the attractions. Then the following summer I convinced Anne Pasternak to put up the money for a lease. And I said, don’t worry. It won’t be the Steve Powers project, it’ll be like a meet-and-greet center for Creative Time. So, the deal was we’d have a small section of the front of the store for Creative Time—we’d have half the shop for Creative Time and half the shop in the back was a sign shop. And of course when the guys actually went to construct it, Mike, who was the guy on the skateboard, made it like an 80/20 split. So Creative Time got relegated to a table in the front and we had a huge sign bench, well we had this huge counter—they just built it. They wanted to build a store that nobody would ever want to go into. And the way they did it was you’d walk in, and it was about ten feet in—see that "Pretty Please?"

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Yeah.

That was the entire footprint of the shop, the front of the shop, was the Pretty Please and the Please, Please, Please and there was another piece that said "Thank You," and that was the entire front of the shop. So when you’re standing on that, there was a counter that went up I think about six feet, maybe seven feet. It was seven feet because I had to reach up to get up on it. It kind of tilted out so you were just being pressed back like you were in front of a judge. And then Matt Wright who, I don’t see any of his work immediately visible but he makes these amazing paper signs, Matt built this wall that went up and had the curve and his curve went all the way out over the shop, like a wave, and he mashed it with paper signs. He just stapled a hundred paper signs to it so when you walked into the shop it was this counter in your face and then this wall of signs crashing in on you. People ran in terror. Everyday people would come in and be like, oh no. They’d walk in and they’d go, aw no. Everyday. That freed us—and it was beautiful. Some people who got it were like, aw man, this is the best thing ever. But for the average passerby that were just trying to use our bathroom or bother us or just interrupt what we were doing (hanging out) it chased them away. Perfectly.

It worked.

It worked great. It set the tone for what we’re doing here. What we’re doing here is an almost faithful recreation of that experience where want it to lift up and hopefully make it feel like it’s going to crash in on you. And the way that I’m doing that is—see these paintings? This is a $25,000 painting. I’m going to take it out of its frame, I’m going to put it up there, and I’m going to drill four or five holes in it to put it in place because ultimately it’s a sign. I paint all these like the frustrated sign painter that I am. I’m only frustrated because I don’t have a lot of time and I gotta get it done and the one shot’s making me cranky. So I paint all these things as fast as I can so I can get out of the shop and hang out. I approach these things not as a painter so much as a sign man that’s actually just making signs about his life.

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But you also have a show at the Brooklyn Museum. You’re a museum artist. This is a huge milestone in your career.

You think so?

I think so.

We want to set this up like a sign shop and that’s what is essentially is, a traveling sign shop. We’ve traveled all over the world, starting in Coney Island in 2004. To set up a sign shop, it’s pretty easy. You need a sheet of plywood, you need some hinges, and you need a two-by-four. And with those you can make a sign bench. Then you just need some paint and some brushes. I bring my own brushes. I find some paint. And we get to work and we make signs. This is our ninth location. This might be the last one. Might be.

I’m interested in learning how—the final level for sign painting is to paint show cards. Show cards used to be these little cards that you would see on the register at Tiffany’s. They would say, ‘Ladies Perfume,’ or something. They’d be really small and they’d be really elegant and they’re all done in water-base. Everything gets painted here gets painted on aluminum and is painted with enamel paint. I need to use solvents to paint it, it’s a toxic mess, it’s a real pain in the ass on so many levels. And the results, since they’ve taken the lead out of the paint, the results aren’t even as good as they used to be. I’m ready now—I’m good enough now that I’m going to learn how to paint water-based signs.

You’re finally good enough to paint water-based signs? [Interviewer chuckles, because she has made a joke of sorts.]

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So, there’s a guy that’s going to help me who’s gotten very proficient in using—he’s an artist named Tim Curtis—water-based paint and I’m hiring him to teach me.

Awesome, so this is next steps?

This is the next step. I’m going to the final level, which is natural. Something organic.

Wow, I definitely didn’t expect that but I’m really excited.

It’s really cool. If you want to make art you’ve got to paint on canvas, right?

Did you know some of the signage is from Coney Island? This piece… that… the knishes… the hot dogs. That’s all from Surf Avenue. When we would paint signs for businesses we’d take the old ones and trade. We got the best deal.

Yeah, I think so.

What my innovation, my technique, what I brought to Coney Island was when it was time for me to paint a knish, I bought a knish. And I drew that knish. From life.

Did you eat it?

Absolutely. It wasn’t that good. I’m allergic to shrimp but I think I ate everything else.

Alright.

Nathan’s is a solid hot dog. It’s been an outrageous journey of learning a craft, learning how to paint signs. But Coney also taught me how to make paintings. There’s a series of paintings that are still in the crate right here called Eight Day Week that I’ve shown only once before—well, I’ve shown twice, but the first time was in a museum in Philadelphia. My first museum show was in my hometown of Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. I showed these paintings in the museum and they were unfinished; they weren’t done yet, which is kind of a motif that I’ve been doing ever since. Not this show. This show everything’s finished. Almost.

Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (To a Seagull) is open from November 20, 2015 to March 13, 2016 at the Brooklyn Museum and also features works by Justin Green, Matt Wright, Mike Levy, Dan Murphy, Mike Lee, Mimi Gross, Alexis Ross, Sean Barton, Eric Davis, and Tim Curtis.

Folow Emily Diamond on Twitter: @Public__Emily

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