Mixed-Up Mosaics Turns Shattered Glass Into Works of Art

“All the pieces fit together, yet every design is unique.”

Countless sheets of colored glass lie scattered across the worktables at Mixed-Up Mosaics, a 6,000-square-foot studio on the edge of the Garment District. While disco music plays over the speakers and the sun streams through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Madison Square Garden, more than 30 employees hand-cut the glass and arrange the pieces into as many as 20 to 30 custom mosaics a day, using an arsenal of tools including rulers, T-squares, hand-held glass cutters, X-Acto knives, and an occasional handsaw.

In 1995, after discovering their shared passion for mosaics, co-owners Allison Goldenstein and Lesley Provenzano started making flowerpots and picture frames in a small studio the size of a one-car garage. Today their company makes mosaic artwork, glass-coated furniture, murals, and wall finishings for clients ranging from Las Vegas hotels to movie sets (Sex and the City 2) to the L’Oréal headquarters in Manhattan. “We both knew how to do mosaic work as a hobby, but not as a business,” Provenzano recalls of the early years. “But eventually we graduated to major installations and over-the-top statement pieces.” Their most memorable project? The Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital in Barrow, Alaska, where the lobby and treatment rooms are outfitted in vibrant, cheery mosaics. “I had to take five flights just to get there, and the last one was on the back of a cargo plane,” says Goldenstein. “It was the craziest trip I’ve ever been on.”

Clients can select from an array of preexisting mosaic patterns, create an original design of their own, or replicate photographs and paintings. (“If you can visualize it, we can create it,” says Goldenstein.) Once a theme is chosen, the team makes a small sample, which is then shipped to the customer for approval. After the dimensions are finalized, the studio’s artisans begin laying the cut glass on large gridded worktables to create the full-size piece, which is then covered in clear tile tape for shipping. Next, they cut the work into several sections and number them according to a “map” that the firm provides as a guide for the installation stage. “It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle,” says Goldenstein. “All the pieces fit together, yet every design is unique.”