The “hUNCHbACK oF nO aCCLAIM,” a.k.a. "Mick the Hick" or just "Mick Braa" represents the obsessive heritage of Finnish (thick skinned) and Scotch-Irish (thick-headed) explorers. He says that he also suffers from the “Leonardo da Vinci Syndrome” wherein one moves on to new mediums once the basics of the current one are mastered. Works on paper feature landscape, Medieval-Renaissance characters and southwestern subjectss. In addition, his fantasy landscape paintings and dye-painted wall hangings (soft paintings) demonstrate “horrors vacuii,” the fear of unfilled spaces. Small and wimsical 3-D works in clay, wood, stained glass, mixed media and fine metals round out his offerings. Trained primarily as a painter and graphic artist, Mick Braa has worked in presentation media, publications and non-profit programming for over 30 years. He has exhibited fabric works, paintings, drawings, prints, turned wooden bowls and small decorative 3-D pieces in the greater Lawrence area. A number of traditional landscape works were selected for exhibit in Cedarcrest, the Kansas Governor’s Mansion in 1995-96. He is also known in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State where he spent a dozen summers painting, hiking and assisting a two-county arts council serving the Lake Placid region. In 1997 Braa debuted on stage in multiple roles (of course) with the Adirondack’s Essex Theatre Company in an experimental play based on the writings and times of Emily Dickinson. In recent years Mick served three seasons as the general and personnel manager of the Lawrence Chamber Orchestra, a small professional performance group and for several years has been a contributing arts and lifestyle writer for Sunflower Publishing’s Lawrence and Topeka Magazines. Mick Braa is always up to something odd or curious, if not simply interesting…and is always ready to rattle on incessantly about his work, your work, their work, or the work done by someone, sometime, or somewhere.