Joel Karhu was born in 1961 in Gifu, Japan, and grew up until middle school. He moved to the United States and spent his high school years. In 1996, He returned to Japan to work full-time for his father, the prominent artist Clifton Karhu. He had spent many summer vacations working for his father, so when he started working full-time, he knew how the prints were made and soon took over most of the curving and printing - after his father died, he returned to Karhu Studio to run the remaining business. He had his first solo exhibition at the Tolman Collection in 2019.
