Joseph Cornell’s splendid boxes!

I didn’t get to sleep till 1 AM this morning after reading a fascinating article about the assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. I’ve felt that in many ways, he’s my spiritual father. A-I describes his work as intricate “signature boxes, glass-fronted shadow boxes that serve as miniature, poetic theaters. Inside, he meticulously arranged collages and three-dimensional ‘found objects’—such as old maps, vintage photographs, watch parts, and marbles—to create dreamlike, nostalgic universes that celebrate memory, astronomy, and romantic cinema.”

I love his quirkiness, his living on the periphery, his unique vision. Reading about him makes me want to go out and haunt junk shops for interesting memorabilia to make things with, to start a collection that I can draw from. I had an image of turning an old radio into a kind of Cornell box.

His way of working is very appealing to me. As Charles Simic described his boxes, they were stages where inner and outer worlds met. I would like such a place to give concrete expression to my dialogue with the unconscious. My writing does that to a certain degree, allowing me to make discoveries through settings, characters, dialogue—through language and all its associations. But I feel the visual arts draw on another facet of the brain. Another dimension.

I also felt inspired by what Cornell did with 16 mm film, cutting up old ones and taking from them what he wanted in order to make a new statement. It’s what I’ve been doing with appropriating certain things from books, fiction and non-fiction, in my writing. Collaging. I’d like to do more, and to be more conscious of the act.