Thousands of artists come to the Ann Arbor Art Fair every year. Most have unique, innovative takes on the art they do.

Imagine that your job, every day, full time, was to do puzzles. Then add in making each individual piece. Then imagine that you lost the picture on the box, and the ideas in your head were all you had with which to create the puzzle.

Welcome to the life of Shannon Kuchera, mosaic artist.

When you first look at her, you’ll first see a pretty, brown-haired woman who looks around 30. Her clothes and hair are unlike the stereotypical ‘unique and quirky’ artist: Which is to say, she is fairly stylish and put-together. She has recently tried juicing- the cooking method where fruits and vegetables are squeezed to make healthy juices- with her sister, and will occasionally take a Washtenaw Community College class. Mosaicing is her main job, though.

The art of mosaicing is a slow, long process. First, Kuchera uses wheel cutters to cut the stained glass into smaller pieces and then glue them onto a plywood surface. After that, “there are little gaps in between the glass then I grout it just like you would a tile… and it’s messy and fabulous,” she said.

Kuchera then pulls out two of her completed pieces of art. One is an abstract piece with three forms that seem to be birds on a background of a stormy sky, and the other is a Day of the Dead wedding tribute, is made up of tiles no bigger than your pinky nail. Kuchera described the process for each.

“Something like this,” she said, referring to the Day of the Dead creation, “I’m never gonna make another one again ‘cause it just drove me crazy- it took so long and was really labor-intensive.” It was a labor of love, though, as the piece was originally intended as a wedding gift for a close friend of hers.

“That’s more as a display of an exercise of patience and the insanity of patience because it really did take me forever…” she said about the piece. “It impresses me that I was able to do that without quitting.”

The artistic process of the abstract composition, on the other hand, was different. “I sat down and I started mosaicing something and didn’t really know what was gonna happen,” she said. She prefers abstract to the more intricate, planned process. “It’s a little more of a fun, sort of meditative process; I think that it’s good for the brain.”

Kuchera would definitely consider herself to be a creative person. She was a web marketer before shifting from a more mathematical, logical career, to become a full-time artist. She notices that the more often she does art, the more characteristics of the stereotypical right-brained person she takes on. “I’ll be more scatterbrained, and forget stuff,” she says.

Despite these comebacks, Kuchera loves what she does. “The first year I made hardly any money at all and it was a little discouraging. The second year, I made slightly more money and it was more encouraging and so I guess now I’m starting on my third year.” The fact that Kuchera’s business is growing shows that geeky, labor-intensive work is appealing.

Regarding looking towards her future, Kuchera said, “I really love teaching so I’d like to explore that more and obviously develop my own art. I like to push myself and learn how to do new things… try new techniques, and maybe not even limit myself to mosaics.”

“They say an artist is an artist and not necessarily just a photographer or just a painter, or just a mosaics artist. It’s a artist working in mosaics, working in photography, working in painting,” Kuchera said. She stands true to this saying through her desire to expand her horizons and explore her talents.