The Power of Story When Blended Lives Create Mosaics

How one woman's quest to honor the generational contributions of coal miners included founding a mecca for artists and creators

Mar 19, 2025

Rachel Sager is one of the wonderful writers I’ve had the privilege to meet and collaborate with on Substack. I first introduced myself to Rachel after I discovered her publication The Ruins Project, which narrates how Rachel brought together contemporary mosaic artists and long-forgotten coal miners through the literal resurrection of a once-thriving coal mine buried deep in the Appalachian mountains. Incredible, right? Who would have ever dreamed up such a unique concept? Well, Rachel did… I could not help being completely astonished by Rachel’s redemptive work and her ability to utilize creative arts as a tool to bridge the gap between diverse cultures (who would likely be considered polar opposites).

THAT is the power of shared stories!

Recognizing this, I had to ask Rachel if she would be willing to share a piece of her journey with us at Just One More Chapter.

As a transplant to this area of the country, I have fallen in love with the deep cultural roots here in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky and the sacrifices of those who forged the future of America with their bare hands decades ago. The people of Appalachia etched into this place their humble, pioneering spirit and resilient, courageous determination which has lasted generations; even as they have endured the loss of all they once held dear. Today, I join Rachel in honoring those who once fueled our homes and our nation.

THE POWER OF STORY WHEN BLENDED LIVES CREATE MOSAICS - RACHEL SAGER

From the first day, I heard The Ruins as a message.

And from that very first day, I instinctively understood that message to be from God.

It had to be God. Because it clearly came from a place outside myself.

I didn’t have the words back then, ten years ago. It has taken me that long to build, succeed, fail, and try again to put into words what a message from God means to me.

I come from a part of the world that is full of the literal ruins of America. Part rust belt and part Appalachia, beauty and despair, strength and tragedy. The little villages south of Pittsburgh dug the coal that fueled the world. And when they were done digging, the people got left in the dust made by the new America.

My message came in the form of a hulking concrete structure, lost in the Pennsylvania woods. An abandoned coal mine operating station set on eleven acres of industrial revolution history. A small piece of a giant story that invited me to be its steward.

The Ruins message was a challenge. A gauntlet laid down that asked, “Rachel, will you shoulder this impossibly large thing?”

Let me tell you the story of The Ruins Project.

But be warned, its story doesn’t fit into one essay. I hope this serves as your entry to digging deeper into the bedrock of The Ruins mysteries.

Before I get to the opening scene, when I took my first walk through its labyrinth of brick rooms and concrete arches, I need to take you back in time just a bit farther.

One year before I bought my coal mine by accident, I happened upon a pile of gold.

On a brisk walk through my urban Pittsburgh neighborhood, I caught a glimpse of the tell-tale shimmer of gold smalti hidden under a blue plastic tarp at the entrance to a Catholic church. As a mosaicist, I was very familiar with smalti as the specialized glass made in Italy for the mosaic trade. Tiny factories have been pouring it out onto slabs for hundreds of years to ornament the cathedrals of the world. The gold kind is the most precious of all and rare to happen upon out in the world. The champagne of mosaic.

**Gold smalti set amidst a field of mosaic shale by** **Sager Mosaics**

I lifted the tarp to see a damaged Mary statue with the gold grotto around her laying in pieces. Too much gold to just keep walking by, I gathered the courage to knock on the rectory door and ask what had happened. The groundskeeper told me the story of a disturbed man attacking Mary with a hammer in the middle of the night. One has to wonder what triggered that specific violence.

After learning how the congregation had built the grotto with their own hands back in the 1950’s, I explained that my skills were not restoration but that I would be happy to help the church find one. I may have hinted that I would happily put all that gold to good use.

The next day he called me and said, “Bring some boxes, Rachel. You can have it all.”

I spent the next several hours carefully picking up every single tiny square of gold. Some had been loosened from their marble substrate; some were still intact. I felt like an accidental mosaic archeologist.

One year later, as I looked at the front door of the strange new place I had dubbed, The Ruins, I knew that I wanted to invite the world in through a doorway lined with gold.

The coal that built the world.

You can take that sentence quite literally. The bituminous coal pulled from mines around Pittsburgh was the raw fuel that made the steel that changed history.

But there is more to The Ruins story than just the progress of industry. To take you deeper into the understanding of this place, I need to invite you back to my origin story. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather mined coal in the Monongahela Valley, very near where The Ruins sits. They owned and ran small drift-mine operations, loaded coal onto barges for home heating, and built our family from the energy of coal.

I have memories of my father listing the layers of stratigraphy under his feet. He understood the big picture of how geology still matters in our modern world. Coal paid for my college education.

As I grew into an artist, I became aware that my peers and artistic community heard, C-O-A-L as a four-letter word. It’s on its way out they say. A dirty, embarrassing footprint over the newly renovated kitchen floor of civilization.

I describe this uncomfortable time period as my own personal Grand Canyon. I had one foot in the blue-collar pride of where I come from, and the other foot stretched across into the world of my progressive colleagues. I spent years full of angst, trying to find my place. And then, I bought my coal mine, and it gave me a stage. It gave me the courage to bring the two worlds together.

I decided to invite the mosaic world in to help me.

Artists and coal miners, you might correctly guess, are not comfortable bedfellows. You might even say they are two groups of people who would rather be adversaries than colleagues. For the last ten years, I have made it my mission to bring these two demographics together to build a physical place that the world can visit. Over 500 mosaic artists from thirty-five states and twenty countries, have collaborated to make art for its concrete walls. We make mosaic that tells the story of coal, ecology, time, immigration, tragedy, and real people. Our mosaic portraits of men, women, and children who worked to dig the coal that built America from 1893- 1946 are some of our most beloved art. But we also make native Pennsylvania birds and animals, maps of countries, and hundreds of abstract and metaphorical mosaics. All art that comes here is designed specifically to tell the story of this place.

I come from a coal mining family, but I live in the art world. This tension, this angst of feeling split in two for much of my life, was the kernel of pain that grew into a uniquely American project.

The Ruins is big. Its physical composition is big in that there seems to always be more of its concrete canvas to keep telling the story. And it is big in a philosophical way in that it gives people bridges. Long-dead coal miners and contemporary artists talking to each other through time and finding common ground.

Finding purpose is God speaking through people.

I feel this must be true because nothing brings me more joy, nothing makes me feel stronger, than when I am working at my purpose.

Purpose comes wrapped differently for everyone. For some it comes as raising children, for others taking care of the sick. My purpose comes in the form of storytelling, mosaic art, and honoring what was.

In fact, the very first rule I laid down at The Ruins was to honor what was.

These three simple words leave room for interpretation but demand respect. Thousands of people from all over the world interact with this story, and I need to be sure that the memory of the people who worked, lived, and died here continues to be honored in spirit. By setting the tone of honoring what was, all things are possible.

To this day, I have not reached out to invite the congregation of Saint Pamphilus Church to The Ruins. Now that I have put their part of the story into writing, I will promise to contact them and hope to welcome through their doorway of gold.

Have you experienced or participated in creative collaborations like The Ruins where arts were used to connect lives and hearts?