Jenna Lechner wrote a lovely piece in this week's paper about artist Seattle artist Rodrigo Valenzuela, who's got a show at Archer Gallery through this weekend:

IT'S RARE to see art that strikes an intellectual nerve, a visual nerve, and a personal nerve, but the photographs and videos in Rodrigo Valenzuela's fantastic show Help Wanted hit all of these marks: The show is conceptually curious, beautifully crafted, and it has a story behind it.

Valenzuela emigrated from Chile to the United States in 2005. He lived for three years without documentation, finding work through labor agencies and by standing on the street; he recalls his time on construction sites, and "the ridiculousness of a 22-year-old Latino guy eating lunch by himself and reading Kant."

Now he lives in Seattle, where he won The Stranger newspaper's coveted Genius Award in Visual Art last year. The Stranger's art critic, Jen Graves, praised him as "generous and hardworking" in writing about the award.

Read the whole thing.