To see my artwork out in the world is inspiring for me, but it also makes me realize that art is important and that it's not just about me, that other people are affected by images and what they see and how they can make work as well.

And I want to get more projects just because people really do appreciate the mosaics, because they last for so long that you're really having a inheriting a piece that will will last forever in generations.

My name is Sarah Cohen and I am a glass mosaic artist.

I got into mosaics when I was in college.

I studied painting, which led me to stained glass and through stained glass and painting on glass.

I apprenticed for a glass artist in my hometown in New Jersey, and I saw that it was very accessible and I could use mosaics and on buildings and inside homes outside.

Just thought it was a really cool medium, so I wanted to do it full time.

I moved to Pittsburgh 11 years ago, and I really loved it because of the art community and the appreciation for the arts.

And all of the buildings, I noticed, like old synagogues and churches, they just have beautiful glass.

And I love that about the city.

And I also noticed that the Pittsburgh Glass Center had a huge glass community.

And when I moved here for a job there, everyone became my friend.

And I had instant friends because of the love of this medium of glass.

The process behind glass mosaics, for me anyway, is I always start with a drawing and a sketch, something I'm inspired by.

Usually a painting, a watercolor imagery I'm inspired by with nature.

And then I have that drawing and then I match it with glass.

Glass comes in a variety of colors, and so I can pick and choose kind of like swatches of paint and create the work from there.

Also, I use a substrate of either wood, which is the backing either wood or concrete, and then I place the glass onto the substrate.

Really cool about glass.

Here in Pennsylvania, I get my glass from Youghiogheny Glass and Wissmach glass.

These are local glass producers in Pennsylvania, which is super rare and lucky to have in the state of Pennsylvania.

It's not every day that you can find a stained glass manufacturer.

There are only so many states that even have them.

I think something like five states in the US, but it's really cool that we have two places that you can actually drive to and select the glass in person and see the sheets that you want, because each sheet is handmade.

So you can see the differences and variations in each sheet and choose what, Oh, that would make a great flower pedal or that would make a beautiful wave.

I feel lucky to have some opportunities here in Pittsburgh to make public artwork.

In Sharpsburg, we have a mural that the community helped me make, and we put it up on the side of Second Harvest Thrift Store.

Everyone came out and actually made it together, and I taught them mosaics, and they taught me new things.

I didn't know about how they would see an image and how they wanted to put it together.

And I also have a piece in Etna in the rain garden there.

It's called Eco Park, and that was another community based project where we made sculptural fish to talk about how rainwater overflow affects our rivers.

And also Glassport.

They wanted a welcome sign because they had to have glass.

If your name is Glassport.

So that was a really cool opportunity, and I feel really lucky to have had some public projects that also involved not just me, but a whole community of people.

I don't want to see, just my work.

I want to see other people making artwork.

It's the most fun thing, and you come together and talk and have like a social aspect to it, too, so you have a great piece at the end.

But then I'm also reminded of that time that we all got to spend together.

It's very therapeutic.

The biggest piece I've worked on is about eight by nine feet, and it took about, oh, that took a long time, maybe like six months, just because I had to coordinate with the community and have hours where they could come in and work on it.

But I've also done a piece that's four by eight feet, and that took about three months.

It's very tedious to have to work on imagery, especially if there's like buildings and flowers and a sketch involved instead of freeform, just putting things down as you go along.

If you're actually following a map, you can get really lost in the details.

So that's why I like having people to work with too, because they can see things differently than the way I do.

Any kind of problems you have in your life, you can actually just feel more free and get your mind onto something else, solving a different kind of problem.