KAY MARTINEZ-LABITZKE
A printmaker and painter, Curt Labitzke also is chairman of the Printmaking Program at the University of Washington.
Snohomish print artist Curt Labitzke’s work focuses on bugs that fascinate and frighten us S TO RY BY A N D R E A B R O W N
WHO: My name is Curt Labitzke. I’m 62 years old and have been making art for more than 40 years. In addition to being an artist, I also teach printmaking at the University of Washington where I have been the chairman of printmaking since 1984. I grew up in a family of makers. My mom is a quilter and stained-glass artist, and my dad was an illustrator and designer for a large advertising firm in New York City before
going freelance in the mid-1970s. He was also a painter, mostly aeronautical scenes from World War II, but also images from our vacations to the Poconos in the summer, like covered bridges and landscape scenes. The first real art job I had was assisting my dad by tracing, copying, enlarging and reducing images by hand, all pre-computers and even Xerox copiers. Once pencil sketches were finalized to scale, he would paint them in. My next art job was in junior high school, painting album covers of my friends’ favorite bands on the backs of their well-worn denim
18 WASH I NGTON NORTH COAST MAGA ZI N E | SPR I NG 2021