During the past decade, the combination of glass with other materials - such as metal, stone, clay, wood, textiles, and organic materials - has been of increasing interest to artists working with glass. In his wall sculptures made of glass and mixed media, Michael Aschenbrenner (b. 1949) explores the fragility of the human body. The context in which he works, however, is not symbolic but political. Aschenbrenner served as a medical field technician during the Vietnam War, and his work addresses the physical consequences of war and the trauma of human casualties. In his Damaged Bone Series, translucent glass bones are delicately attached by thin wires or carefully bound with rags and supported by wood splints. The reverence with which the bones are treated, as well as their deliberate presentation as relics, is a mute reminder of the transience of existence and the horror of the battlefield.