![\"Stoplight](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/IMG_4946-e1453861937332-300x182.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt’s just a messy pile of color – seven pieces of construction paper that I drew at random this morning and tossed on the board.<\/p>\n
What I saw in the pile was pleasant because of the colors. But no one would say it had\u00a0beauty.<\/p>\n
I played. The triangles suggested mountains. First I did “A Stoplight in the Mountains,” but it was awkward:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then I saw the triangles as sound waves, and made “The Blast of a Stereo.”<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/IMG_4948-e1453861987553-300x182.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
It might suggest sound, but not beauty.<\/p>\n
Then I grouped the primary colors together, and saw a tugboat floating on a river. I put the mountains in the background. All those horizontal lines and the pastel mountains make for a tranquil\u00a0scene:<\/p>\n
![\"Tugboat\"](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/IMG_4949-e1453862095154-300x188.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Though the composition is too cramped due to the size of the board, I see potential for beauty. The mountains are peaceful,\u00a0receding; they make a calm backdrop that contrasts with the bright tugboat moving smoothly through the water.<\/p>\n
There were others – a joyful singer, a jumble of blocks going down a chute – and they came together in a fast-flying snowboarder:<\/p>\n
![\"Snowboarder\"](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/IMG_4961-e1453862220182-229x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Her energy comes from the color contrasts and the uneven, angular pitch of the pieces.<\/p>\n
It feels something like beauty. To me.<\/p>\n
I know that, like “art,” there’s no definition of “beauty” everyone would agree on.<\/p>\n
Here’s how I define it today:<\/p>\n
Beauty is the realization of the fullness of life.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 1985, the year I learned to ski.<\/p>\n It’s just a messy pile of color – seven pieces of construction paper that I drew at random this morning and tossed on the board. What I saw in the pile was pleasant because of the colors. But no one would say it had\u00a0beauty. I played. The triangles suggested mountains. First I did “A Stoplight … read more The tugboat and the snowboarder<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[520,35,82,355,454,603,604,602],"class_list":["post-6682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvisation","tag-520","tag-art","tag-beauty","tag-color","tag-shapes","tag-skiing","tag-snowboarding","tag-tugboat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6682"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"1985](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/1985-Jan-26-300x250.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"