Sarah Donato is an artist specializing in mosaics, fine art, sculpture, collage and design. She has spent her life refining her artistic talents with the forever-goal of creating beauty in the world, fueling culture, and bringing communities together. The love Sarah has for life shows in each piece she creates and is complimented by her desire to evoke emotion within her viewers. Through her art, she aims to expand consciousness while deepening connections and gratitude for each other and our surroundings.

Sarah is currently a dual-degree graduate student studying Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Colorado - Denver, College of Architecture and Planning. Her undergraduate studies are in Public Relations and Fine Arts at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, and it was during these years when she found the medium of mosaics. After 10 years of living in New York Metropolitan areas, she moved west to the San Francisco Bay Area and Sonoma, California where she further deepened her skills, specifically with mosaic art and sculpture. With her desire to design on a larger scale, she gravitated towards the field of architecture. Sarah completed the Design Discovery 2019 Architecture Studio Certification at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and currently resides in Denver, Colorado with her two cats, Mira and Loki.

Sarah recently completed front entryway renovation and ground installation of a new public mosaic for Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, a beloved music venue in Denver’s historic Five Points District, as well as custom mosaic installations for homes in Boulder, CO, and San Francisco, CA. Additional projects include, Brownstone restoration with The Brownstone Project for custom tile entranceways in Brooklyn, NY, an outdoor mosaic patio installation at Lost & Found Bar & Kitchen in Albany, NY, and a public mural in Petaluma, CA.

See more projects and photographs in mosaics.

Sarah Donato Mosaics first started with the title, “by Saraswati”, which serves as a by-line to honor the goddess Saraswati.

Although the site name may have evolved, the history and meaning remain a key message behind all the artwork Sarah creates.

The Story of Saraswati

Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and arts, represents the free flow of wisdom and consciousness.

It is believed that goddess Saraswati endows human beings with the powers of speech, wisdom and learning. She has four hands representing four aspects of human personality in learning: mind, intellect, alertness and ego.

Traditionally, people of many thousands of years ago, placed their confidence and valued the unseen world more than they did in material possessions. Modern people have become very materialistic, matter is the most important thing; if we can prove, and measure it, then we can trust it. For ancient people, something was meaningful not in and of itself, but because it was pointing to something more substantive.

The ancient lifestyle and culture depended on rhythms of nature for survival. Moderation in the yearly seasons meant that the crops could be abundant as a result of evenness from the sun and the rains; and so then the seasons of one’s life would too bring health, and nourishment, offspring and a long, happy life. All of life’s rhythms, within and without, were links in a chain that contributed to the whole, the holy, and one’s wholeness and wellness.

Easy to imagine, they worshipped the earth, the rains, the sun, and the waters – especially the rivers and the adjacent tributary valleys.

The three most sacred bodies of water in India are the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the Saraswati rivers. In fact, one of India’s holiest pilgrimage festivals, the Kumbha Mela, which occurs only once every twelve years, is held at the confluence of these three rivers. The Ganga and the Yamuna still run today, however the Saraswati River had a different destiny. Saraswati is translated as the “One Who Flows”, and that she did –flowing through the Indus region, nourishing the lands for many, many years. Yet the time came when the quality of her Being transmuted from the state of form to formless, and she left the smaller realm of bringing fertile life to the river valleys and the peoples who lived there, to hold the space as the Goddess of the broader fertility; to inspire human beings to bring forth their most creative expression.

Saraswati is called the mother of the Vedas and the keeper of Brahma’s creative intelligence. For most Indian artists, all art and all new art traditions originate with Saraswati. Lord Brahma, in order to create the world and the human race, made a Goddess out of himself. One half was woman, and the other half was man. Brahma called the woman Saraswati. Creative energy is her siddhi and for this reason she is worshipped by every Indian artist.

The transformation of the mystical Saraswati River and her life-giving waters were no longer intended to bring forth sustenance and nourishment on the physical level. Yet, Saraswati’s ability to bring forth life did not diminish! It continued on and remains today, as a lifeforce energy that comes from beyond form to feed all human beings who ask for her help.

Saraswati Devi now nourishes her people from the unseen realms. She helps to bring into form that which has not yet been made manifest: a thought, an imagining, a dream, a series of musical notes, a passion– she is the goddess of music, art, and wisdom– and acts much like a muse to inspire and reveal one’s inner landscape of pre-creation such that it becomes an outward expression of beauty in the world.

Nourishment flows from the unseen that is Saraswati, through the individual such that from nothing, something is cultivated into being. She is the holder of wisdom. Not the knowing in and of itself as if she is the wise One, but she is the inspirator. She invokes a flow of fertile energy, as the artist or contemplator becomes an open vessel to allow the creative lifeforce to flow through and spark insight, free expression, and deeply passionate inspiration; and new life as artistic expression is born.

Etymologically, Sara means Essence, and Swa is Self; the Goddess Saraswati, associated with the 2nd chakra of nourishment to self and others, is truly the One Who Flows, the one who brings flow to your deepest Essence and most authentic gifts, such that they flow through you to seed the world in exactly the way the world needs.

May Saraswati’s energy rain down upon you and nourish you in the form of radical, passionate inspiration and expression in order to create beauty that is truly in service to humanity. All beauty is service.

Her Mantra: Om Aim Saraswataye Namaha

Story Credit: https://www.ramdass.org/the-story-of-saraswati/

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