Joe Boruchow began making paper cutouts while stenciling posters for his Philadelphia based rock band The Nite Lights. As his stencils became more intricate and less durable he began making prints from the cutouts and the resulting black and white images they produced have become a mainstay on Philadelphia’s posting boards and telephone poles. Often provocative and funny they have been noticed by music fans and fine art aficionados alike. Sara Sherr of the Philadelphia Daily News said in her November 2003 profile of The Nite Lights that “even if you’ve never heard of (the band), you can’t miss the unique cutouts and posters designed by frontman/guitarist Joe B that adorn the walls of record stores and coffee shops. His band’s music, like his artwork, stands out...”

The thirty-one year old Washington DC native is self taught. He describes how he became enamored with the ancient medium of paper cutouts. "Making images out of paper is like sculpting and performing surgery simultaneously. It is an exercise in excision (it's what you remove that is important) and this has really informed my creative process. Whether it be composing songs, performing or making cutouts my goal is to refine an idea to its essence. It begins comprised of many fractured elements and its my task to decipher what serves that idea and what does not." This results in renderings of intricate images both symbolic and emotional from single pieces of black paper mounted on white satin. Joe Boruchow has been involved in many solo and group exhibitions including a 2007 juried show at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in which he won first prize.

His next exhibition of new works, "IMPACT: New Paper Cutouts by Joe Boruchow", will be on display November 14th through December 11th 2007 at The Bean Cafe, 615 South Street. It includes his most ambitious work to date, "Death of a Patriot", a five panel narrative and a series of six patriotic posters. Together with salacious nudes and images of disaster Boruchow's latest work explores the psychosexual origins of U.S. foreign policy and its ethos. "I do not have a particular political agenda with my work. I see my work as a kind of public Rorschach test that is best suited to reflect the psyche of the viewer," says Boruchow. By juxtaposing the fragility inherent in the paper cutout with patriotic symbols of power and violence "Impact: New Paper Cutouts by Joe Boruchow" is an exhibition of ambitious scope and dedication to craft.