Jackson Free Press

When you step into the Mosaic Shop, the feeling is welcoming. Wanda and Robert Hendrix, both Texas natives, greet you with charming wit. The couple opened the first Mosaic Shop in 2001 in Waxahachie, Texas. In 2006, the couple moved to Mississippi to be closer to their daughter, Julie, after she and her husband moved. "We love it here," Wanda Hendrix says of Mississippi. "We don't want to leave."

Hendrix has explored many art mediums, but creating mosaics is the one that has appealed to her the longest. "I guess it's the mixture of the colors, textures, (and) shapes," she says. "It just combines all of them."

Mosaic is an art form that's been around for centuries and can be seen in the Hellenistic villas of the Macedonian palace dating back to the fourth century BC. "It's like coloring within the lines, only doing it with glass," Hendrix says.

Primarily using small cut pieces of colored glass, artists create images. You can also use other materials such as ceramic tiles, clear glass backed with colored foil, or even Scrabble pieces will work.

The Mosaic Shop is a creative outlet that invites the youngest art enthusiast or the oldest free spirit to come in and create their own mosaics. Whether you are out for some Saturday solitude or catering to a group of 12-year-old Picassos, the Mosaic Shop is the place to find an artful escape.

When you pay for a project, the shop supplies everything you need to complete it, even patience. Some pieces require more than one visit to the Mosaic Shop before they're finalized. But if you don't want to make the trip back to the Oak Place Shopping Center in Ridgeland, you can take your piece home and grout it later.

The projects can be as simple as you want, like a starfish, or complicated like a bulldog. As you exit, Hendrix and an adorable brown mosaic monkey wave goodbye, and you head home, full on colored-glass creativity.