Bj Smith

Artist-in-residence at The Art Lab in Greenville, NC.

I started creating stencils almost 30 years ago. Back then airbrush art was everywhere, but I couldn’t afford a fancy airbrush that let me control the width of the paint. Handcrafting stencils not only allowed me to create intricate artwork but the artwork looked different from everything else.

I still use much of what I learned decades ago in my art today. One day, as I was posting a photo of a new hand-cut stencil on Instagram, it hit me that the stencil is a work of art itself. Now you’ll see many of my pieces made from layers of hand-cut paper so the “stencil” becomes the art.

I studied marketing and advertising design at East Carolina University a couple decades ago.

2019, The Schwa Show: A national juried art exhibition
2018, The Schwa Show: A national juried art exhibition
2018, The Politics of Sustainability Exhibition