Featured Artist: Rachel Sager

I am a passionate/regular Apoxie Sculpt user, both with The Ruins art and for my online mosaic courses. I am planning a group call to artists for a long-term mosaic installation at The Ruins, the launch will be in February. It is called The Ruins Beehive and will be a giant color study made up of hundreds of hexagonal frames. The participating artists will be purchasing their frame kits from Sager Mosaics Studio. After their mosaic color studies are complete, they will send them back to be installed on a specifically chosen wall at The Ruins. The end result will be a permanent mosaic beehive of color visited by thousands of people a year as a part of The Ruins Tours.

Knowing that Aves has a particular interest in bees and that the family even has their own hives, I thought you all might be interested in being a sponsor of the project. The Ruins has its own mosaic beehive coke oven with accompanying little bees already and is ripe for more bee metaphors. I’m working on the first few samples this week, made of micro mosaic and Apoxie Sculpt.

In addition to the launch itself, I will be hosting Beehive Cross Pollinator Meetings on Zoom for sharing and learning as we work in our separate studios. To learn more about The Ruins Project, The Beehive Color Study, and to read thoughtful essays each week on the creative process, you can subscribe for free to The Ruins Newsletter.

“I’m working on the first few samples this week, made of micro mosaic and Apoxie Sculpt.”

More About Rachel

Rachel Sager, The Storytelling Mosaicist, has been making mosaic, writing about mosaic, speaking about mosaic, and teaching mosaic for over twenty years. Her signature forager and intuitive teaching styles have changed how mosaic is experienced and have helped build on the golden age that the art form is enjoying in these exciting decades. 

As the owner and creator of The Ruins Project and Sager Mosaics, Rachel lives and works as an Appalachian entrepreneur in the hills and hollows of her hometown just down the river from Pittsburgh in Fayette County. 

The easiest (and most engaging) way to keep up with what’s happening at The Ruins is by subscribing to The Ruins Substack which is also where you can find the growing episodes of The Ruins Podcast, a collection of conversations that Rachel hosts with all walks of creative people who interact with her cathedral to coal. 

Rachel Sager, Creator of The Ruins Project

Watch this video to learn more about this project here: The Great Ride: The Ruins Project

To read the stories go to https://rachelsager.substack.com

Take her class, “The Uncommon Canvas“

Walk with me down another path less traveled, this time in the form of a new kind of canvas. Instead of hunting for the pieces of things that make up a mosaic, we’ll hunt for uncommon vessels in which to put pieces of things. This course is all about making mosaics in unexpected objects and places. This online course, which I like to call a“dessert course,” is crafted for the “nontraditional” micro mosaic in particular but can be adapted for any size of mosaic tesserae.

Rachel Sager, “The Uncommon Canvas“

Try out these related products: Aves Finishing Solution, Aves Apoxie Paste, and Aves Apoxie Sculpt.