Where to learn how to make glass mosaics in Chicago

A little blood blotches the colored shards on the bench in front of Ellie Thompson.

It’s an occasional hazard of playing with glass.

“I was the bloodiest of everyone here,” jokes Thompson, 58.

By which she means the half dozen other people spread out around a bench in a studio on the North Side, where they are scoring and breaking glass into tiny pieces — practicing an art form that other hands took up at least as far back as 3,000 years before the birth of Christ.

Ellie and her fellow students are beginners, taking an introductory mosaic class at The Chicago Mosaic School, 1127 W. Granville. The superficial finger cuts are a minor inconvenience as they work with colored glass to create flowers, leaves or, in Bob Sutton’s case, a coal-black peace sign.

“I think I’ll donate mine to a museum. I don’t want to be selfish,” jokes Sutton, 63, a North Sider.

There’s a lot of jokey banter among the participants in this laid-back class, where on this day, snow swirls in the air outside.

“Today, we’d like to get these mostly finished. If you don’t, don’t fret,” says instructor Sue Coombs, who has been teaching here for the last 15 years.

Coombs brandishes a crescent-shaped hammer, used to cut glass and stone, a tool that, with the exception of a carbide tip, has essentially remained unchanged in 5,000 years, Coombs says.

“It’s the same tool system that was used by the Romans,” said Karen Ami, the school’s founder and artistic director.

On this day, the students are working with colored sheet — or stained glass — which is relatively easy to cut, using a tool called a wheeled nipper.

In the next week, they’ll move on to a second project, using smalti — a thicker type of glass also known as Byzantine glass. That’s when the hammer comes in handy.

The studio’s smalti comes in every color you could name and dozens more you probably couldn’t. There’s little danger of the studio running out any time soon. Much of it is stored in hundreds of buckets in the basement — originally 7,000 pounds of scrap from The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, where its walls are adorned with about 83,000 square feet of mosaics.

The studio’s Gallery of Contemporary Mosaics (all student work currently on display) gives new students a glimpse of what’s possible — even for a relative beginner.

“It’s a very accessible art form, meaning that you can find success creating mosaics from the very beginning,” says Ami. The students tend to be older — many retired or semi-retired — in the day classes, and younger in the evening classes.

During a break in the class, Coombs leads her students to the gallery.

The mosaics here swirl and bristle into designs that range from the whimsical to the somber to the majestic, including a flaring sunrise built with hundreds of smalti pieces in tangerine, fire engine red and lime.

“I’m blown away,” says Thompson.

And these days, mosaics are made out of just about anything — pieces of metal, shards of pottery, plastic, slivers of slate, even a rusty paint brush.

Some students come to the studio with an art background. Thompson, for example, owns a jewelry store in Roscoe Village, which features some of her own designs. But many don’t have any experience with art.

You don’t have to possess an artist’s eye to create something beautiful with mosaics, Coombs says.

Courses range from the basic to the advanced, with the opportunity to work with visiting masters from around the globe.

“It depends on how serious you are, how curious you are, what level of expertise and knowledge of art language you want to have,” Ami says.

To learn more about the class offerings at The Chicago Mosaic School, 1127 W. Granville (prices for classes and workshops vary), visit chicagomosaicschool.org.