A touch of glass
Pulse editor
Sunday, January 18, 2009
A fused-glass baptismal font played a prominent role when the 25th General Synod of the United Church of Christ met in Atlanta in 2005. It was a proud moment for artist and nurse Lori Schinelli, RN, BSN.
“They had commissioned the bowl and asked me to use shards of red, blue, green and clear glass to represent fire, water, earth and spirit,” Schinelli said.
Photos by BARRY WILLIAMS / AJC Special
Lori Schinelli, a nurse in the day surgery unit at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite, works on a glass painting in her home studio.
Schinelli made this fused-glass baptismal font. It was displayed at the Georgia World Congress Center during a national meeting of the United Church of Christ in 2005.
The synod used the bowl to represent the sacrament of baptism during the opening ceremony. Then it was set on a pedestal with special lighting and running water at the crossroads of the aisles of the Georgia World Congress Center’s Main Hall.
“Throughout the conference, people would walk by and touch the bowl and put their hands in the water,” Schinelli said.
She was thrilled to see the response.
“It made me feel very honored,” she said. “I think it must be every artist’s dream to have something that she created become a sacred object.”
Schinelli, who has been a nurse since 1980, works in the day surgery unit at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. She prepares young patients for surgery and cares for them during recovery.
Around 1998, when Schinelli’s boys were older, she took up artistic hobbies and tried her hand at painting, sculpting and pottery. When she took a glass fusion class at the Spruill Center for the Arts in Dunwoody, she found her niche.
“I love the transparency of glass and the way the light comes through it. It’s kind of magical,” she said. “When you open the kiln you never know what you are going to find. It’s like Christmas morning.”
Schinelli makes dichroic — a glass that came out of the space program — glass jewelry and small decorative bowls to sell at crafts shows and galleries, but her real love is making large pieces like sinks and baptismal bowls. Three of her pieces are now in churches around the country.
“There’s a lot of science and chemistry in fusing glass, which is where my nursing background comes in handy,” Schinelli said. “You’re dealing with heat, and the kinds of glass and colors you put together expand and contract at different rates. They need to be compatible during the firing and cooling-down process.”
Fused-glass artists place pieces of glass in a kiln and fire it up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit to make unique patterns. The glass may come out as a flat sheet, or it can be fired on top of a mold to create a bowl or other form.
The pieces can be further enhanced by manipulating them while they’re still hot or by sandblasting, cutting and grinding them after they cool.
Schinelli has taken classes around the country, including some at the famous Corning Museum of Glass in New York.
She has also discovered glass painting. She uses glass powders to draw on clear glass and create a representational image or an animal or a landscape.
“The glass is opaque, but some light still comes through it,” she said.
Glass again became popular as an artistic medium in the 1980s, and artists are still experimenting with it.
“It takes lots of patience, and you have to be as detail-oriented as nurses are, but the fun part is the experimentation,” Schinelli said. “You take what you’ve learned in class and what you know about the characteristics of the glass, and then you see what happens.
“You may do something that no one has ever done before. When I go down to my basement studio, I get totally lost in what I’m doing.”
With five kilns and numerous other tools — not to mention the heavy sheets of art glass that she buys in North Georgia — Schinelli has outgrown her basement and is building a new studio in her backyard.
“It’s no longer a hobby, but an expensive addiction,” she said. “At least my family tells me I’m easy to buy for. Power tools, sanders, lapidary wheels, grinders and polishers are always welcome.”