Steven Johnson is a former graffiti writer from Oakland, California, who wrote as BLAZE. He began writing graffiti in 1983 after seeing Style Wars on PBS and developed his lettering through wall pieces and black-book drawings in Oakland and Berkeley until 1990. He later became a lawyer.
In 2024, he painted at the 23rd Yard in Oakland again after about thirty years away. His illustrated memoir, BLAZE: The Birth of Oakland Graffiti (2026), brings together surviving photographs, original black-book drawings and his own recollections of the early East Bay graffiti scene.
