In a recent Piece by Piece workshop, participants were given a beautifully simple challenge: start with a single shard of glass or ceramic, and let it guide the rest of your mosaic. For Jea, a new participant in the program, that prompt echoed her own creative journey—one that’s still taking shape but already full of intention.
Jea learned of Piece by Piece through her sister, who found the program online. Several months prior, Jea's daughter nearly died, an experience that deeply traumatized her. While processing this trauma, Jea found herself compulsively cleaning and organizing, yet still felt things were fundamentally out of order. As she put it, "I wanted to fix things because they were messy."
While she and her daughter continue to navigate the emotional aftermath, Jea sees joining Piece by Piece as a way to create beauty from brokenness, finding a path to healing and order through art. With a growing curiosity about the world of glass, she took a leap into something new. Her first experience with glass fusion—though not the main focus of her current work—sparked her interest in working with color, shape, and possibility. “I tried to make a fish, but half the body fell off,” she said with a laugh. “So I started making earrings instead. Maybe my daughters will like them.”
That quiet pivot from experimentation to discovery now informs Jea’s approach to mosaic art. She’s still learning the tools, still developing her eye, and still shaping what a creative process looks like for her. “I don’t have a big game plan,” she admits, “but I believe I’ll get there. I’m enjoying this.”
The shard-based mosaic challenge provided the perfect metaphor for her journey. Just like each participant selected a random shard to begin with, Jea is building her path piece by piece—starting where she is, with curiosity and care. The images from the workshop show the range of responses to the prompt: some mosaics grow outward in bold color, others cradle their central shard with quiet symmetry. Each work reflects the unique vision of its maker.
Though her glass fusion project won’t be pictured, it remains part of Jea’s broader exploration—an early step in a growing creative journey. “I’m starting to understand how to get shapes and visualize something,” she shared. “I feel like I’m advancing, and I’ll be able to bring in a design I’d like to attempt.”
For now, Jea’s story reminds us that all creative work starts somewhere—and sometimes, all it takes is one shard to begin.
