The Curator’s Eye

Having done some stencil work myself, I know it’s its own craft. It takes a lot of patience, a lot of hours and a lot of detail work. Since I first saw his work at a Robert Daniel Gallery show, I’ve been drawn in by Joe’s stencil...perfection. He’s really good at what he does. — M.E.

Joe Korbuszewski says the reason he never learned proper brush technique is that he got his start painting graffiti. When he first moved to Washington in 1995, he lived in a house his grandfather built in Sumner. The railroad switch tracks were just behind the house, so the trains would practically park in his backyard (heaven for a graffiti writer). As he got older and graffiti lost its rush, stencil art became a logical next step. He still paints with spray cans, but on canvases he can take with him. His subject matter often comes from photographs of urban landscapes. But the images shown here are more unusual for him: one is a self-portrait taken at his kitchen table, another, a Darfuri woman shown in a protest on television. She’s holding a baby in one arm and an AK-47 in the other. “There’s estimated to be over 100 million AK-47s circulating the globe right now,” Korbuszewski says. “Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russian man who invented the gun, has said in interviews that he wishes he invented something like a lawnmower instead.”