ARTIST STATEMENT I design, create, and install portable and architectural works from the flotsam and detritus of the twenty-first century building industry. My work emphasizes salvaged or recycled stone, porcelain, and glass, much of it garnered from builders and manufacturers who purport to be “Green.” I hand cut these gleanings with Roman-era technology, and recombine the pieces based on ancient Byzantine poetic grammar. Many still refer to this art form as “mosaic,” and I do, too, sometimes...until that category becomes too limiting.  Then I say I create art from hard garbage. RECENT & UPCOMING EVENTS I just returned from a few weeks in Austria and Czech Republic.  The city of Brno in southern Moravia has to be one of Europe's best-kept secrets.  Tourists tend to ride the train from Praha (Prague) straight through Brno to Bratislava in the Slovak Republic.  Perhaps they see Brno's gritty, communist-era train station through the window.

Were one to venture out, however, and brave the disorienting signage and hike up the hill to the town, one would encounter a rich surprise.  The experience cast me back to my training as a cultural anthropologist:  I purposefully entered an environment whose symbols I couldn't interpret, so therefore I could assume nothing.  On this particular trip, I focused more on materials and place and less on individual people.  I visited art museums and bookshops; snapped photos of architecture, texture, and funny signage; and rode a train and a bus to the nearby village--Šaratice, pronounced SHAR-a-teetza--that my grandpa left as a little boy with his extended family in 1913.  I asked myself questions about the roles of art and architecture--with careful attention to mosaic, of course--in the evolution of human consciousness and whether they have anything at all to do with DNA.  I don't have an answer (but see Anthony Lawlor's blog).

My lack of an answer is fuelling the work I'm doing for an upcoming solo exhibition at Mithun Architects gallery space, opening in November 2010.  Other good stuff in the works so stay tuned. Images:  Top left: a bottle cap rests in a crevice in the bricks under the cracked stucco of the 13th Century Minorite Monastery in Brno, Czech Republic.  Middle right:  Mosaic above the entrance to the 17th Century Kapuchin Monastery in Brno.  The Kapuchin Monastery houses the infamous crypt with the naturally-desiccated mummies.  Bottom left:  I know but I'm not telling. Jo Braun © 2002-2010. All rights reserved, property of Jo Braun and Studio Ravenna LLC. Images may not be reproduced in any form except with artist's permission.