![\"1](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1-300x243.jpg\")
<\/p>\nKelly handed me a pair of safety glasses. “Your eyes are at just the right height,” she said.<\/p>\n
I was digging through a box of scrap glass, and snipping pieces apart with a mosaic cutter. Shards tend to fly when you use those.<\/p>\n
Kelly was right, my eyes were in the danger zone – and I hadn’t even noticed.<\/p>\n
When I handle glass, I forget that it’s sharp, that it can cut. It feels like velvet to me. Handling and cutting glass is soothing.<\/p>\n
I love how art glass feels – the two sides of its surface, like Braille, talking of its history. In the scraps that I choose to work with, I can feel the fingers of all those people who made it and touched it and worked with it.<\/p>\n
I love the edges of it. The cut curves, the pointed edges, the rounded end of a sheet. Satin and steel and water.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I love to feel how one piece touches another. How they clash or meld, how they cozy up or repel each other.<\/p>\n
![\"4](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/4-249x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I love holding a string of glass over a candle, heating it just till it softens, the soft giving way that makes a bend.<\/p>\n
![\"3](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/3-254x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I love fitting the pieces together. Love how a piece of glass eases up with just a tiny nudge when the glue is still tacky. How they swim when they’re floating on a pond of sprayed adhesive.<\/p>\n
When they come out of the kiln, they’re a solid form, but each bit of glass in the composition\u00a0retains its character. Smooth edges, fused surfaces, but many shapes.<\/p>\n
Still feels like velvet.<\/p>\n
Today’s penny is a 2015. I hope that someday I remember that year only for learning to make fused glass<\/a>. Nothing else.<\/p>\n Kelly handed me a pair of safety glasses. “Your eyes are at just the right height,” she said. I was digging through a box of scrap glass, and snipping pieces apart with a mosaic cutter. Shards tend to fly when you use those. Kelly was right, my eyes were in the danger zone – and … read more Like velvet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[67,35,788,284,39,588],"class_list":["post-7235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvisation","tag-67","tag-art","tag-cut","tag-glass","tag-hazard","tag-sharp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235","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=7235"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7248,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235\/revisions\/7248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"March](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/March-9-2015-300x273.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"