>> Terri Souder: My name's Terri Souder. I'm a US Army veteran and a member of the organization called Uniting Us. It was founded by an Air Force veteran who saw the therapeutic value of art in her life and wanted to start sharing that with other veterans and family members. So when I found Uniting Us, I got involved quickly with my photography. I have since started to venture into glass work. And the video that you're going to see today is a video of me actually creating the piece that you will see in the gallery for the exhibit here at the Library of Congress. There are three different color roses. Each rose is significant to Vietnam veterans, this being the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. The roses signify the veterans that never made it home, the soldiers that died in Vietnam. There is one color for the POW/MIA who we're still looking for and hoping to bring home, eventually. And then there's one color for the veteran who made it home in one piece, but died later of wounds related to the war, whether it was from Agent Orange or injuries they incurred in combat or suicide due to PTSD. The vase itself has a forget-me-not on it, so that we will never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice and defended our country. And the glass inside, every time you create a piece, you still have some residual glass on the end of your rod when you break off your piece. You dip that in a bucket of water to shock it and then put it in a bucket of nothing but glass. The shards that you see in the base of the vase to anchor the stems of the roses are there to symbolize the broken and shattered lives that these men and women came home with when they came back from Vietnam. And there is a forget-me-not that I placed on the base, for obvious reasons to me and anybody who's served that we never forget them. We always remember them and their sacrifices. So Uniting Us has given me a unique opportunity to get involved and create pieces for events like this. And I look forward to every call that I get from AnnMarie, and I really look forward to getting in the hot shop and creating a piece. It is therapeutic for me with PTSD. I have a lot of trouble with other people. I have a lot of trouble being in a crowd. I have a lot of trouble with anybody in a position of authority. But when I come into the hot shop, it's me and one or two other people, and I concentrate on one thing at a time, just one thing at a time. And when I complete that one thing, then I can move on to the next one, and eventually after I've completed enough of the steps, I have a full piece. And even if it's only once or twice a month for two or three hours, it gives me something to look forward to. It gives me something to focus on, and it forces me while I'm there creating the piece to be in the moment. I don't have to worry about anything outside. I don't have to worry about war or famine or are my bills getting paid this month or is my neighbor being a jerk today and letting the dogs run in the yard? I don't have to think about any of that when I'm here. This is therapeutic to me. Coming to the studio is my escape from everything else out there on the other side of that door. So when AnnMarie calls me and says, "We have an event. I'd like you to think about a piece," I immediately perk up and I get excited and my eyes light up every time I think about this place. So I thank you for the opportunity, AnnMarie and Tiffany. I thank you for all the work that you have done. I thank everybody I know at Corning Museum of Glass who has helped me along my process and is continuing to teach me every time I come to the studio. And I thank you for listening to this video. Have a lovely day. My name is Terri Souder and I did this piece for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall 40th anniversary this year. The first part that I did was I created roses. Once I gathered the glass, you see me shape it. After it was shaped, I created some color by dipping in frit. Once I had the basic shape I was looking for, I took the tweezers. You pinch and pull, and that forms one of the petals of the rose. As you roll the pipe away from you, you twist the tweezers towards you getting a counter, and that will give the effect of the curled petals on the rose. I took it over to the break off table and giving a gentle tap or two, we were able to break the rose off of the pipe, at which point my assistant, who his name is Ross Delano, he was assisting me with putting the stems on the roses. Ross then took the entire piece, the Rose and the stem. He slowly stretched the stem while at the same time twisting and that gave the spiral effects that you see in the stem. The next piece that we worked on was the forget-me-not. What I did was I got a small gather. I used my jacks to shape it into almost a slightly elongated ball. So then what we did for the petals, we used a blue frit. Then we went around with little dots for each petal, and as I applied the petal, I took what's called mashers and that made the glass flat. After we had the forget-me-not broken off of the pipe, we placed it on a paddle, and the paddle was placed in a warming oven called a garage. This gives me time to create the base. I did two gathers of glass and got what's called a starter bubble. Now that I have the amount of glass on my pipe that I'm looking to use for my piece, I start to shape it. After I had achieved the size that I wanted, I got ready to separate my piece by asking Ross to get me what's called a punty. Now that I have transferred to the punty, I take my jacks again and I start shaping the neck with the jacks. As you angle the jack, the mouse slowly starts to widen even without the neck getting wider. As we applied the heat, Ross went and got the forget-me-not out of the garage. He brought it over and we heated up not only the spot on the base where it was going to go, but we also momentarily heated with the torch the back of the forget-me-not. Now that we have the piece completed, we take everything over to the annealer and we place it in the annealer. Instead of using smooth store-bought marbles to anchor my stems into my piece, I chose to take what broke off of the pipe and the punty rod after my piece had been removed. So the shards that are in the bottom of the glass are from the rest of the piece that I created. I was looking to do something to honor the Vietnam veterans, and when I looked up flowers that are used most commonly to honor Vietnam veterans, the first thing that came up was roses, a red rose for the fallen that never made it home, a yellow rose for the POW/MIA, and a white rose for the soldiers who made it home but died later as a result of the war. I chose the forget-me-not so that we would never forget the service and sacrifice of the men and women who went and fought in that war. I used the broken-off shards that were remaining on the pipe and the punty, so they would still be pieces of the other components of this project. And I did that to symbolize the broken and shattered lives that these men and women came home with when they got back from Vietnam.