Biography of Seattle artist Jo Braun

Jo Braun, PhD

Born: Mitchell, South Dakota, 1971

Biography

Mitchell, South Dakota, is home to the World’s Only Corn Palace, a monumental structure covered with enormous mosaic murals made entirely of corn. But I never felt compelled to make a mosaic—out of corn or anything else—nor did I dream of becoming a professional artist. I had somehow absorbed the belief that being an artist was something only people in big cities did—frivolous people with funny accents and a predilection for cutting off their own ears.

As Fate would have it, at age 18 I headed to college at University of Minnesota’s big-city campus in Minneapolis and began cultivating a taste for “frivolous” subjects like anthropology, French, Hebrew, and worst of all, post-modernism.

A BA in anthropology wasn’t enough, so I ploughed straight into University of Iowa’s Ph.D. program. My research carried me as far away from the prairie as one could possibly go—to mountain rainforests in Papua New Guinea and urban squatter settlements in the Solomon Islands. I survived two strains of malaria, hookworms, a knife assault, ethnic violence, and weekly church services in five denominations. I wrote my dissertation, received a paper stamped Ph.D., and found myself in the marketing department of a large Seattle corporation with a regular paycheck and benefits package, living in a nice house in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood with my husband Tom and cat Arturo.

I should have been happy, but I wasn’t--I was bored. Something was missing… I had to make a mosaic! I figured I'd need tile and grout, so I bought some at the local art supply store, along with a big piece of foamcore board to stick it on. The directions on the grout tub said I should glue the tile down with “adhesive,” so I walked to Safeway and bought some rubber cement in the school supplies section. Believe it or not, that first mosaic turned out OK, and I was happy.

Three years and thousands of studio hours later, I quit what had become just a “day job” to build Studio Ravenna LLC. With an emphasis on using salvaged and recycled materials, I’d argue that I’m anything but frivolous, and I still have both my ears. Seattleites do occasionally tell me I talk funny, “like in the movie Fargo.” I just tell them I’m an artist.