Air Force Graffiti Artist


Staff Sgt. Corban Lundborg, Air Force Reserve combat cameraman, shares what it is like to leave active duty and dive headfirst into life as a full-time artist in North Hollywood, California.

Video by Army Staff Sgt. Alexander Henninger

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Transcript

Air Force Staff Sgt. Corban Lundborg: I use heavy spray paint when I’m working … using house paints, water. There’s no secret formula or anything. I just … buy up a cheap can of paint and mix it up when I get to location. My name is Staff Sergeant Corban Lundborg, and I’m a combat cameraman in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, and I run an art business in North Hollywood. When I’m painting portraits, I like to fill the frame or fill the space of the wall and really take it up. And I’m working up through dozens of layers, where the first layer is … very broad brushed and loose. And then the next layer will be tighter and tighter until I get to those final details with a very thin brush. [orchestra stops, concerned strings begin] Stepping into … full time art is scary. You don’t have much of a guaranteed income of any sort. You’re jumping into the deep end, and I made that jump after I left active duty. I was able to stay in the Reserves and that was a way for a little bit of a cushion in case my art career fell flat. Being an artist allows me the freedom to really excel in being an Air Force Reservist because I have the ability to take on different assignments and Air Force projects and set my art stuff aside and then come back to it. The two of them really build off of each other. To overcome early art challenges, I just lived very simply, which allowed me the ability to be creative really just live off of selling paintings to begin with. [optimistic strings] A buddy of mine sent me a Craigslist ad, maybe five years ago, for an art festival in Dubuque, Iowa. I was skeptical at first, but, I pursued this Craigslist ad. That was the first time that I was brought in on a pretty big project where I realized I could really do this for a living.

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