Holy shit pinch me I'm dreaming x And in Pen-ruff x

So talk about a strange Saturday. 

I was invited to go and see a new art show on at the Penrith Art Gallery, at first I declined purely on the basis it was in Pen-ruff, however I was persuaded by the fact that alledgedly some of my ALL TIME favourite artists were there.

So I took a chance, piled into a  Ford Festiva, and rocked my way to Penrith. 

By gosh am I glad I did. Turn's out we were invited to a very exclusive artist talk with one of the artists in the show.

And that artist turned out to be STEPHEN POWERS!!!!!! Only one of the MOST influential graffiti artists EVER! 

Powers in based in NYC and is most famous for his ESPO ( Exterior Surface Painting Outreach) tag, and public mural projects. Monster Children's last issue featured a massive spread on Powers.

My favourite of Power's projects is the ' A Love Letter For You Series' which was a series of  50 deeply moving murals dealing with the complexities and rewards of personal relationships. Like huge private love declarations painted across the city of West Philly USA.

This is one of my favourite of the 50, Steven was explaining that Michael Jackson had just died  and the Philly locals kept asking him if he was painting a mural for Michael, perhaps a giant crystalized glove.  So to keep the locals happy he has scrambled the King of Pop's name into the magnet mash-up on the left corner.

These murals are inside a prison in West Philly, Steven was contacted by the inmates English Teacher  whilst he was painting the Love Letter series and decided to spawn this smaller series 'A Kite For You'. They call letters that prisoners pass between them "Kites", so the middle mural had strong meaning to the inmates.

The man himself Steven Power's is seen above in the white t-shirt, I got way too to nervous to approach any closer. Now I'm kicking myself!

After the talk, we all walked down the main street in St Mary's to Steven's makeshift studio to have a perve at what he had been working on.

Steven has been commissioned to create a large mural for a business in St Mary's. We were all excited to see pieces after hearing all about his past mural projects, needless to say we were slightly disappointed when we saw the above painting which were mock ups for the final project. Steven explained the mass of red tape the local business's had slapped on the project, hence it's commercial side overruling its creative prospects.

I'm still majorly stoked that I got to hang with the man in person.