Reham Aarti turns broken glass, china, and forgotten things into walls of color — and into a community held together one connection at a time.
Mosaic Essential • Garden City, Idaho
Some people make things. Reham Aarti makes connections — and the mosaics are just what’s left behind when she’s done. Cut glass, tumbled china, salvaged ceramic, a thousand small pieces set one at a time until a wall, a skull, a fountain, or a violin becomes something nobody walks past without stopping. Her studio sits in Garden City, but her work is scattered all over the Treasure Valley, leaving what she calls a trail of people who now have beauty in common.
I get to make the world physically more beautiful and shinier than when I found it — and I touch every single life, just like I touch every single piece in a mosaic.
Finding the Beginning
Twenty-eight years ago, Reham was a nanny standing at a crossroads. Her youngest charge was headed to kindergarten, and she had a decision to make. Around the same time, her mom lent her one month’s worth of bills — thirty days to try to make it as an artist. “So I decided to jump,” she says.
The clock was the whole point. Thirty days to prove it could work. What she became, in her own words, was “my own force of nature.” She got into a gallery. She was asked to write a book about mosaics. She landed her first public art grant. “Every yes was a new path.”
Why Here
Reham’s roots run between two worlds. Her mom was raised in Hailey, Idaho; her dad came from Kuwait to study, and the two met here. When Iraq invaded in 1990, the family came to Idaho because this was where the family was. She’s been here ever since — split, as she puts it, between two worlds, and rooted in this one.
What does she see in this community that other people miss? “Potential,” she says, “and a friendly ease that makes connections possible.”
The Giving
Ask Reham about generosity, and she’ll tell you it’s built into the business — not bolted on. “It’s part of my business model to say yes to worthy causes regardless of the cost-benefit to me,” she says, then adds, with the kind of honesty that makes you laugh out loud: “I’m just lucky to have an accountant that lectures me about donating more than I make and still helps me stay in business.”
If she had to pick one cause, it’s kids — raising them to value themselves, to believe in their abilities and dreams, to feel that someone sees them for who they want to be. She works with kids at hospitals, daycare centers, schools, scout groups, and community groups.
Her latest big give: a retaining wall on the Garden City greenbelt. She volunteered the time if the district could raise the money for materials. Then more than a hundred volunteers showed up, and together they covered a wall a hundred feet long and four feet tall with art — the sticking done in weekend bursts, weeks of cutting and tumbling the dishes to make them safe, and seven-plus weeks of grouting it all. “A two-year labor of love that’ll last a lifetime,” she says. “I learned I’m getting older and might need to start asking for help, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
The Fire That Keeps Her Warm
What’s the thing she protects, even when it costs her? “My integrity,” she says. “I’ve lost commissions over it, I’ve had to set the record straight a few times, I’ve certainly taken financial hits over it — but I’ll never set aside my priorities, convictions, or work ethic.”
And when the world gets heavy, what reminds her why she started? The joy that creativity brings into the world — the way people talk about the emotions they feel standing in front of her public pieces, or even the small ones they keep in their homes. “Art is a place to rest some of the heaviness sometimes,” she says, “and that reminds me why I keep going.”
The Crossing
There’s always a point where you almost turn back. For Reham, the answer is pure her: “Maybe I’m too delusional, but any time something tried to derail me, I pushed back, pivoted, changed course, or regrouped. I did what I had to do to keep making art my full-time choice.”
Not everything survived the crossing. Asked what she lost along the way that she didn’t expect to, she doesn’t flinch: “Husbands. Apparently, men aren’t overly fond of women who out-achieve them. Love and learn.”
The People Who Show Up
When she became herself unapologetically, she says, the right people started arriving.
“The people who needed that energy started showing up, and the people who matched that energy started lifting me, and wonderful, amazing, creative souls started showing up in my studio. Some I helped heal, others walked me through things, and all of us are better for those connections.”
One of those people is a best friend, also an artist, who works in metal — one of the top in his field, and someone who still takes none of it for granted. “Having multiple people in my life who keep me in awe of their presence, love, and friendship,” she says,
“Reminds me that I’m doing it right.”
The Secret
What would surprise people to know about her? She keeps it short: “Maybe I’m not as tough as I like to act all the time? Lol.”
What Fills Her Back Up
After she’s poured out everything she has, what refills the tank is knowing she left a mark.
“Knowing that I’ve left a trail of people who have mosaic and beauty in common — connections that would never have happened if I didn’t exist in the world. I left a mark. Sometimes a loud, slightly abrasive or possibly uncomfortable mark, but a lasting thing that ripples into the world, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
In the end, I’m creating the kind of world I want to live in, one person and one piece at a time.
What She’d Want Remembered
If it all ended tomorrow — the business, the work, all of it — what would she want people to remember? That there’s no such thing as an ending. “Everything is just an opportunity to see with new eyes, to find a new adventure, a new direction, passion, obsession. Everything we do is connected to everything else; it just recycles out into the world. So it’s just: what’s next?”
In Her Own Words
“A thank-you to my family for having my back and making it easy to jump into the unknown, because they were always the net. To all the people who buy art, support art, share art, dream about projects and possibilities. And to all the people who believe that art is the best part of humanity. And to the people who aren’t afraid to share ideas, opinions, and conversations in a creative space — THANK YOU.”
Find Reham’s work
Mosaic Essential on Facebook • @Rihmeh on Instagram • Studio in Garden City, Idaho
Community Spotlight is a series from Poor Man Window Cleaning celebrating the people who make the Treasure Valley worth living in.