Public artist Joe Boruchow takes his work to Philadelphia's streets

Joe Boruchow has a surgeon's grace when armed with his X-Acto knife, carving intricate patterns and austere scenes into sheets of black paper hardly bigger than his hand.

If he slices a millimeter too far, it may create what Boruchow considers a flaw. But "sometimes if you've looked at something for awhile, your eye corrects little mistakes," he says, scrutinizing the freshly sliced checkers in a taxi he's cutting.

Awareness of tiny flaws seems appropriate for Boruchow, who works seven hours a day in minuscule detail. But it's also unexpected, perhaps, given where he chooses to hang his work: telephone poles, mailboxes, dilapidated buildings across the city.

His reasoning? "Very few people go to galleries and museums, and when I put my work up in the streets I know people will see it and react to it. And I feel like that's what makes the art live."

For six years, Boruchow has enlarged his cutouts to poster size, which he then plasters on eyesores and other unremarkable places in Philadelphia. Those in the public-art scene admire his stark designs, which offer social commentary, irreverent humor, elaborate patterns, and whimsical portraits. His work has become a fixture in Philadelphia - a city rich in public art - as he has tackled an array of genres, vigilantly posted his work, and paid attention to both craft and concept, they say.

"Intricate isn't a word that I would use to describe a lot of street art. But his art is very technical and intricate," says Judie Gilmore, the Mural Arts Program's director of strategic initiatives. "It's so simple. It has this simple beauty to it."

Boruchow, 35, who lives and works in South Philadelphia, certainly feels accomplished, but he's at a unique juncture, looking to alter the approach that has made him recognizable and, perhaps, move away from a quality that has given his art its edge - impermanence.

"Every artist wants their work to last," he says. "Right now, when I go so will all of my work. You won't see any of my work. There will be nothing that'll be left. I want to leave something."

At the end of July, Boruchow posted his newest series of cutouts along 11 big, boarded-up windows outside the Philadelphia Traction Company, a run-down trolley station in West Philadelphia that has been converted into a collaborative art space. Artists there asked him to do the installation after seeing his work around town.