A Bronx Kid Helped Bend Graffiti Letters Into Jagged New Shapes in the 1980s. His Alphabet Just Landed on a Vape at Your Gas Station.

July 5, 2026

Robert Provenzano started drawing at five years old. By thirteen he was fully inside New York's graffiti culture, chasing letters that jabbed and interlocked instead of rolling soft like the bubble script writers had used for a decade, according to Sugar Press Art. He goes by CES. Fifty-some years later, that alphabet is stamped on a nicotine vape you can buy at a gas station.

a wildstyle graffiti mural painted by CES on a Bronx wall. Image: streetartnyc.org.

The alphabet that took over graffiti

CES became one of New York's leading practitioners of wildstyle, a streamlined, aerodynamic reconfiguration of letters that swapped the rounded curves of classic graffiti script for jagged, aggressive, hard edges, according to Sugar Press Art. The style took over train yards and then walls across the Bronx and beyond, and it's still the visual language most people picture when they hear the word graffiti. CES helped carry that transition from trains to walls, and his letters have been shaping how younger writers construct a piece ever since.

None of that happened in a museum. It happened on property that didn't belong to him, on surfaces nobody asked him to paint. That's the tension sitting under every version of this story: the same jagged alphabet that got kids arrested in the 1980s is now a licensed design asset.

a 1980s New York City subway car covered in wildstyle graffiti lettering. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

A vape brand came calling

Timeless, a vape hardware company, and WET PAINT, described as a graffiti collective rooted in street culture and contemporary art, launched a year-long artist collaboration series in early 2026. The first release went to Persue, a Southern California graffiti artist whose character-driven work spans graffiti, animation, and fine art, according to a PR Newswire release. His artwork went on a limited-edition Timeless Flip Case, turning the device into what the release calls a pocket-sized canvas.

CES is chapter two. Timeless and WET PAINT announced the Bronx wildstyle veteran as the series' second artist, expanding the collection beyond the flip case to a limited-edition T Series device and a Tumble 5-pack, each carrying his signature layered compositions and structured lettering, according to the announcement. The release frames it as pairing Timeless' hardware platform with WET PAINT's network of culture-shaping artists, backed by original storytelling content and activations rolled out nationally.

the Timeless x CES limited-edition vape device and flip case product line featuring his graffiti artwork. Image: leafly-public.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com.

Not his first logo

CES has done this before. He's collaborated with Puma, T-Mobile, The Palms, Seamless/GrubHub, Nickelodeon, Vans, Marriott Bonvoy, and Turner Broadcasting, and his work has been covered by The New York Times, The Source, Mass Appeal, Complex, Juxtapoz, and Time Out New York, per Sugar Press Art's artist bio. A wildstyle innovator ending up on a hotel loyalty program and a wireless carrier's marketing is already a familiar arc. A nicotine vape is a new rung on that ladder, and a more uncomfortable one, given how aggressively vape brands lean on youth-coded aesthetics like graffiti lettering to move product.

That's the part press releases don't dwell on. Wildstyle was built by teenagers writing on trains they weren't supposed to touch. Its inventors are now in their fifties and sixties, and the brands paying for their signatures aren't sneaker companies or streetwear labels anymore. They're nicotine delivery hardware sold at the same counters as lottery tickets.

The series keeps rolling

Timeless and WET PAINT say the artist series continues throughout 2026, with more collaborations across additional markets and product formats still to come. Two chapters in, the pattern is set: pull a name with real graffiti history, put a limited run of gear in front of national retail, repeat. Whoever's next joins a list that starts with a Southern California character writer and a Bronx letter innovator who was drawing before he could read.