At one of the far walls of the museum's entrance are tall concrete-like barriers, backdrops to art pieces depicting an IED, a memorial display, and the tears and blood of war -- glass embodiments of the gritty reality of combat.

Through March, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash., is exhibiting a small collection of works of the Soldiers and veterans who are the students in the Hot Shop Heroes program, a joint venture between the museum and the Warrior Transition Battalion here which allows them to heal through the art of blowing glass.

Instructor Patricia Davidson said it takes courage to work with molten glass in 2000 plus degrees of heat, although it takes even more courage to express oneself truly through art.

"Seeing your deepest experiences clearly, so that you can manifest physical objects and then put them on display for all eyes to see -- these are the supreme acts of bravery," said Davidson, who along with instructor Greg Owen taught the art of glass blowing to 150 students since the Hot Shop Heroes program started two years ago.

Earlier this year, Hot Shop Hero participants began the planning process for the first exhibit of their work; the result is a mix of war-inspired pieces, to include a scene of a scorpion fighting a camel spider, along with other more traditional and whimsical glass pieces.

"They all mean something very, very important to us," said Sgt. 1st Class Peter Bazo, a platoon sergeant at the WTB and one of the artists of the exhibit. He worked on the battlefield memorial piece, "The Final Goodbye," and helped to design the "Taste of Blood and Tears." While the Iraqi Martyr's Memorial in Baghdad served as the original inspiration for the piece (Bazo's brigade was headquartered there in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom), the final piece's symbolism was more universal.

"I wanted to display something to show that even though the blood has dried, there are still thousands of tears on top of it," said Bazo, an artilleryman who deployed four times to Iraq and Afghanistan. The salt and shavings of iron it rest upon reflect the taste associate with it, "salt for tears, iron for blood, and it occasionally spills out."

The third piece on the T-wall, "Nasty Surprise Underfoot," was thought up by Staff Sgt. (retired) "F.M." Bonsall. He deployed six times to Afghanistan and Iraq as an infantryman. By his second tour in Iraq, they'd sometimes see six to ten IEDs a night. He found that IEDs were a common experience for everyone who deployed to that region, so Bonsall began to think that the exhibit needed a piece about them.

"I struggled with it at first; I struggled about even mentioning it. But I've lost friends to IEDs; I got a friend that's paralyzed… It just screamed that it needed to be done," said Bonsall, who retired after 18 years in the service. "It's such a large part of our life over there."

In creating the IED rendition, "I put a piece of myself into this work."

He also rediscovered some of himself while in the program, to include rebuilding his ability to trust again--something he lost downrange. At the hot shop, Bonsall started connecting with his fellow artists as they got together weekly to create glass art.

"Rank gets shed, experiences get shed, and we're just kind of stripped down just to us and dealing with people as people," he said.

For Bonsall, the whole experience was "powerful in a deep, subtle way." He's now planning to go to art school in January to lay the foundational skills to become a glass artist.

This building of resiliency and healing the spirit overall can be one of the key ways art can help heal.

"There's a lot of deep, personal growth that happens here and deep healing that happens with the Soldiers in this environment … (it) gives them the ability to reach into themselves, to parts of themselves that lay dormant," said Davidson.

Officials with the museum and the Army hope that the Hot Shop Heroes program can serve as a blueprint for other museums throughout the country to help other veterans to heal from seen and unseen injuries.

All active duty servicemembers and veterans from all services and eras are eligible to join the Hot Shop Heroes program. For more information, visit museumofglass.org/hotshopheroes.