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Vietnam veteran’s street art and backstory bring him friends, finance and a home

By Munazza Choudhury

An elderly man sits atop a dented and dinged motorized red scooter that he relies on to get around. An injury has made his 79-year-old legs too weak for walking.

Spackle and paint are splattered on his white T-shirt and blue jeans. He has propped a bag of pale blue tiles on the pole supporting the scooter’s seat. 

“Hey. How ya doing?” he calls out to one man, crossing the intersection of St. Mark’s Place and First Avenue.

The guy waves his greeting back to Jim Power, the old artist on the scooter who, until three years ago, had been homeless for more than 30 years. 

“Thank you very much, made my day,” said Power, whose friends and associates call him “The Mosaic Man.” 

Over the last 38 years, throughout the East Village — on lampposts, the bases of lampposts, flower pots, exterior walls of buildings, the concrete barriers that keep cars from plowing into pedestrians — he’s created 80 artworks out of shards of stained glass and broken mirrors, pebbles, stones, plastic that’s the color of amber and other precious gems. He spackles those objects onto things. 

There are handmade buckles and disks adorned with colorful shards of tile and glass set upon the cement next to a lamppost covered by mosaic ready to be sold. His phone number, Venmo and the GoFundMe title are stuck down by yellow duct tape, with writing in black marker: “Keep the dream alive.”

Sometimes, in a blank spot, he adds a commemorative sketch of Lucky Luciano the mobster, Patti Smith the singer and author of “Just Kids,” her memoir, and other people with ties to the East Village.

“I have, the kids that have come down through this neighborhood, 40 years, well 38 years now, for generations, have never once sprayed on my work,” Power said. “That doesn’t happen to anybody. These are the young kids who tell them not to spray on my work. This rises above everything. It has a long history.”

The mosaics add beauty to the neighborhood, said Rene Carcia, who works at Brooklyn Dumpling Shop on First Avenue. “Seeing things like that is art. It’s something out of the norm.”

Part of how Power landed in a home again, after 30 years of being without his own residence, was through the people who latched onto him because they like his public artworks. And because he has spent all those years starting up a conversation with whomever, building a community for himself that way. 

That community has raised money for Power through GoFundMe. That community established a non-profit to take care of his daily needs and provide upkeep for the mosaics, which are cleaned and shined weekly.

“I want to share [his practice] with at least two people. “ Power said.

One of those people is Jennifer Mae Martin, 39. She is Power’s caretaker, administrative assistant and his apprentice. She will carry on his tradition when, as he’s planned, he retires in two years from making mosaics.

“The options are endless really, with what he can do. I think it’s one of the most, I don’t know, oldest art forms?” said Martin, who TK before she started working with mosaic tiles.

“I feel like they do, I feel like maybe a third does. I think it needs to unfold into like, a little like a half. It would be, like, no doubt. No problems, you know what I mean?” she tries to explain when asked if the community comes to help. “This is why we need support from the neighborhood, we don’t get these supplies for free.”

That accident that hurt his legs was three months ago. But he won’t talk about the details of what happened. “I almost lost both my legs this year. I count my blessings.”

The accident means that he has to spend money he once would’ve spent on mosaic materials on medical supplies, adding strain to an already struggling cause. 

“The money we make, it just goes right out. It comes in, but it goes out.”

But with the difficulties attached to having no government funding for such a large project, he relies on the community for support. 

One recent day, Power paused from telling his story to a stranger to sell a red, white and blue decorative disk to a family of three for $200. He usually sells such disks for $500, he said. But he’s a sucker for a toddler in a stroller. 

“Let’s see if I have something,” he told that little girl while searching in his pockets. “Oh, I sure do! Would you like to take a pick?”

He drops a medallion in her outstretched hand. 

“Destiny has been bestowed on many people who have done stuff, but this takes a goddamn effort to do it in the first place,” Power said, starting to laugh. “You got to have the balls.”