Meet Professional SAMA Member Christopher Elam. You may see more of his work on his website and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
After moving to Bloomington, Indiana in 2010, Christopher Warren Elam started Sycamore Tile Works, a tile-setting and mosaic fabrication company. In 2017, the company was rebranded “Omosaico” to reflect Elam’s shift away from standard tile-setting toward a regular studio practice creating tile mosaics and contemporary fine art. A student of the Chicago Mosaic School, Elam has studied extensively with Italian mosaic artist Matteo Randi along with a host of other mosaicists from around the world. Elam’s work can be found in public installations, private collections and has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. Elam’s academic background in intercultural and religious studies continues to inform his work. He currently lives in the hill country of southern Indiana along with his wife and son. In his free time, Elam enjoys writing, listening to music, cycling, hiking and boating.
Christopher writes: Despite the daily realities of poverty, racism and militarism, I still believe the world is infused with grace and beauty. Creating mosaics is one of the ways I participate in these mysteries. Through the slow and repetitive process of cutting and setting pieces of glass and stone in mortar, an image often comes to me as a thing to explore. I create mosaics because they are slow enough to offer me the gift of time to discern a thought, an emotion, an experience, an image or some other curiosity and then make a beautiful expression of it. Artists, in my mind, are uniquely situated to try and try again to bring about an encounter with Beauty.
Pine Needles, 2016, Stone, smalti, Kokomo glass, shell, copper