Johanna Muench

Mosaics

I’ve always been crafty or artsy, but never thought of myself as an artist and never found my milieu. But a memory always niggled in my brain: Many years ago I saw a PBS documentary on Dale Chihuly — I didn’t focus on the glass as much as I did on the freedom he expressed in color and the movement of his body. He was so free! Like he knew that THIS was what he was meant to do, to dream and create. I thought, “that must be amazing to feel that way…”

In 2023, on a whim, I took a mosaic class at BARN, and that was the day I realized that same amazing freedom of expression. I could finally see how to really color in whatever lines I wanted, I could feel the fragility of the glass and the danger it brings… Now I see a photo, a drawing, a card from a friend—and I reconstruct and reimagine it in broken glass.