We have a nice batch of thinset mixed up ready to go and ... a coat on the wall mud coat first.

So this is not a real real big insulation, it's just Mrs. Mi...

The ruins project is history, art nature.

And it's the past and the present and the future.

It's a giant cement canvas of mosaic art that used to b...

So I chop up rocks and turn them into larger compositions tell... 1901 When Pittsburgh coal company purchased the mind f... of the mind at one time employed over 800 And some men.

On February 22 1946, there was a slight fall that killed three... it was like ground zero for the Industrial Revolution.

The c...

So there's that part of it.

But then there's also looking b...

I'm an artist who works in mosaic and I cared deeply ab...

I bought it you know, I bought this place for the house.

But...

There's a beautiful word called condimento which means to m... That is creates an elegance that helped the Greeks and the Rom... able to see the big picture you know, if you go back in time, you know, back to ... That's a little bit of overkill, but I kind of just want... And you think about not just not not just how you're positioned because you want... and you can hear it.

It's kind of like the golf swing, I tel... you just know it See how easy that was.

It was like butter, you know so m... Beautiful.

I almost don't want to cut that.

So what I'll do is when I st... Obviously, you look for the shapes that you're creating.

If you're a mosaic artist, you pretty much start by talk... 1000s of colors that are available for artists to buy.

But maybe you could say that that's like the champagne of ... You can get melted down and turned into a thread of gl... she would call these Tesaro put my glasses on for this part and use the tweezers and you just just gonna put the fi... it's kind of a miracle adhesive that we use a lot over the ru... not a glue it's like I'm gonna be creating a bed by putting it inside of t... similar to how I would work with a sent thin set mortar which...

I come from a coal mining family my father grandfather and great grandfather all ran and mi...

I learned through osmosis from my father all these differ... And, and somehow that just soaked into who I am I took a couple of classes from Rachel, the last one was... You know, every time I spend time over in the ruins you know there's always something one of the first things that I found over there that ... an old dime and mercury dime from Rachel remembers what year it was from but it was From a year when the mine had been in operation, and, you know, it was just an instant trip, to imagining that place with men working in it and a dime fall... quite quiet, needs to be here, it needs to be on these walls, it would ...

I was flabbergasted I was very amazed because we used to p...

They brings to mind a lot of things that my husband grew...

I mean, there's so many different ways of making a... And a lot of it is quick.

Mosaic in particular is one of ... really nice thing in this world that we live in is to be able...

I bought the house in the winter of 2015.

And got it it v...

I didn't know, very quickly that I wanted a studio and I wan... it's almost it's almost like I can't help being that way.

It's just j... but I can't not do it.

I've learned that and I think ...

I'm just always trying to make things more beautiful and br... Time is always a part of the conversation, whether it's ... is about talking to the land and the materials we pull from ... And ephemeral art is art that is here for a while.

Sometimes... And I think part of it part of part of a way into ephemeral art for me was j...

But part of it is also being in conversation with the temporary pneus of everythi...

I do a lot of thinking up here about the relationships that ...

This is kind of like my solitude here.

I love it when people c...

It will often only come out at the end of the tour.

I tried...

So William Henry Mills was among the African American coal miners that came to whats... part of the great migration was which was when the bl... And he, what has been one of our first choices to turn into, you know, a mosaic portrait, Miss Mariah Mills, I learned a lot about her.

When I started research...

They went through a long period of time, there were a lot... brings you know people together she helped them I've been told that she's has Native American ancestry and ... and then guess it was a year ago maybe I put her out on Instagram kind of an open call which was crazy I probably wouldn't... And Adriana move Farage and I may be pronouncing mispronouncing t... And she she jumped on on board.

And that's that's how t... what what a wonderland what a what a way to live what a what a gift to, to other artists, Rachel provides to create this sp... With age for me is realizing that every single human...

I think sometimes there's little talismans or totems in an obj... that's outside of ourselves Yeah, well, we enjoy the beauty of course, and I think maybe...

I look at it all the time, and not in a morbid way.

I've j...

I want to create as much as I can before I die, you know, meaningful beauty