The Ruins Project, a surprising and moving art installation in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, honors the coal mining history our regions share.
Photographed by Nikki Bowman Mills
In 2015, in the little community of Whitsett in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, a woman returned to her roots and bought an old red brick building she’d admired as a child. The woman was internationally recognized mosaic artist Rachel Sager. The building turned out to be the former office of an abandoned coal mine on the property.
As the descendant of three generations of coal miners, Sager felt the history of the property powerfully all around her. And as a mosaic artist, she couldn’t help but see potential in the blank walls of the mine’s derelict structures. In the decade since, she’s invited more than 400 artists to join her in creating a collaborative living art installation and memorial she calls The Ruins Project.
Northern Fayette County is just an hour’s drive from Morgantown, and the histories of both are bound up in the Pittsburgh seam of valuable bituminous coal that lies beneath them. Because it ran close to the surface at Whitsett, as it did just west of Morgantown, small, independent mines opened in the late 1800s in both places, followed by larger corporate operations that drew workers and anchored communities. That shared history makes the drive from Morgantown to join one of the scheduled tours of The Ruins Project a meaningful afternoon.
A Place Transformed
Crossing a small pedestrian bridge dedicated to Sager’s late coal-mining father, the tour begins at a now-doorless opening in the old coal tipple, the structure where coal was collected for loading into railroad cars. Around the doorway, glass and imprinted clay tiles are arranged in textured patterns that blend organically into the rough old concrete and, at the same time, mark it as a special place.
The original mine on Sager’s property opened in 1891, tour guide Erika Johnson begins by explaining. It was run by the Whitsett and Luce families and, for a time, was called Rainbow Coal Company. Soon after, Pittsburgh Coal Company bought it, along with a string of other small mines that dotted the Youghiogheny River valley. The Rainbow mine was renamed, less whimsically, Banning #2, and it was the most productive of the lot, employing more than 600 miners at its peak. Banning #2 operated until 1946, and the ancestors of many of today’s residents mined coal there. Some died there.
The backstory Johnson shares isn’t incidental—it’s central. Sager asks that participating artists and visitors alike “honor what was.” That means respecting the labor and lives that brought coal up out of the ground to be smoldered in nearby coke ovens, then sent to the
Pittsburgh steel mills to power the building of this country.
The mosaics honor that, and more.
In the roofless room beyond that first doorway, a long glass-tile line makes its crooked way across two walls. It marks the path of the 150-mile Great Allegheny Passage rail-trail that
runs from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, and passes directly alongside Sager’s studio and The Ruins Project. The GAP trail is made up in part of the former Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad line that served the Youghiogheny Valley mines, and Whitsett and other mining communities are located along the line on the wall. In the same room, the opposite wall holds a variety of works unified by a meander of gears of all shapes and sizes, some with teeth interlocking, many filled with round mosaics contributed by artists from all over the world.
Materials matter. The “tesserae,” or mosaic pieces, here include sandstone, shale, and red dog—a mining byproduct—found on the site and Youghiogheny Glass made in nearby Connellsville as well as hand-cut glass mosaic tiles known as “smalti,” irregular pieces of fired clay, and more.
The tour wanders among crumbling walls past abstract and realistic mosaics, each with a
story. A beehive with a fire at its center represents the tens of thousands of “beehive” ovens
where the coal was purified into hot-burning coke—this one is circled by buzzing bees. Fayette County wildlife shows up: birds, porcupines, a fox, an incredibly detailed turkey. A collection of small, multicolor hexagon mosaics by hundreds of artists brightens the exterior corner of the brick fanhouse. The variously decorated, dozen-foot-long shaft of an outsize arrow is artist Wendy Casperson’s yearslong project recognizing the Native people who once lived here.
One of the rooms displays mosaic portraits of real people who were connected with the
mine—the face of a miner who died there at the age of 23, teenage sons of miners captured
in a Polaroid taken just a couple weeks after the mine closed, others. The largest installation,
a 67-foot-long engine and cars of the P&LE Railroad, was, astonishingly, completed by
Pittsburgh mosaic artist Stevo in under three months.
Schedule a Tour
The Ruins Project is full of stories and surprises. The opportunity to walk among the ruins of
a mining operation is rare enough—but to do it while seeing aspects of its history portrayed so lovingly by a variety of artists is extraordinary.
Tours must be scheduled in advance by visiting Sager’s website—visitors without
reservations are welcome to the shop and studio. The hour-plus walk takes place outdoors on level but uneven ground, so wear closed-toe shoes and dress for the weather. A great way to visit is to plan a hike or bike trip on the GAP trail—Sager Mosaics lies between mile markers 104 and 105, near the trail parking at Whitsett. sagermosaics.com
READ MORE FROM THE FALL 2024 ISSUE