Featured Artist: Mark Brody, Portland OR

(Photo credit: Jo Brody)

I have been doing mosaic for over 30 years. My first mosaic was for a built-in nook on a shower I created in my hand-built adobe house in Taos, New Mexico. Finally I was able to add some artistic details to the laborious construction work I had been doing for the previous 2 years! The combination of building materials and colorful glass and tiles is what I find so exciting about mosaic.

I like to work in both 2- and 3D, indoors and out, in windows and on tables and walls. I experimented with all these techniques to learn about proper materials, and I put this information into a book that was published in 2015, Mosaic Garden Projects, which shows how to make 25 different projects.

My wife Jo and I moved back to Portland in 1999, and I have been teaching in schools as an Artist-in-Residence ever since. Our two boys enjoyed having two creative artists as parents, but decided on their own that music was their form of art. They both live in LA now and are teaching, and designing websites for musicians. My house has a large basement studio that is always in use, and this is where I teach mosaic classes (look for my November schedule in the upcoming PNW Glass Guild weekly!)