Mesopotamia · Rome
From temple columns
to Roman floors
Mosaic is one of the oldest art forms in human history. Born in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC, it first adorned Sumerian temple columns with small colored clay cones. The Greeks refined the technique. Rome elevated it to its classical peak: opus tesselatum covered the floors of villas and bathhouses across the Empire. Each tessera — a cube of stone or glass — was hand-cut and set one by one into fresh mortar. Every piece, bespoke by necessity.
Byzantium
Glass and inner light
The Byzantine Empire transformed mosaic by inventing smalti — glass tiles charged with metallic oxides whose luminosity no stone could match. Light no longer reflected off the surface; it seemed to come from within. This glass heritage lives directly in the materials Karen works with today.
The craft today
A tradition of
transformation
Across its 3,000-year history, mosaic has always been an art of transformation — raw material cut, reassembled into something new and permanent. Karen continues that tradition in Houston: taking the plain, the overlooked, the ordinary, and returning it as something bespoke that lasts for generations.
“Mosaic is the only art that rewards being seen from far away and up close. From a distance, an image. Up close, an infinity of decisions.”
— Karen