Peanuts and Crackerjacks with Your Latte? Paper Intarsia Exhibit a Hit at Park Slope's Starbucks

Ah Spring! The start of baseball season and the end of tax time drudgery is celebrated in Alexandra Corbin's "The Boys of Summer" exhibit, part of a crackerjack collection of figurative works in paper intarsia. The show opens with a reception April 15th, 6-9pm at the Park Slope Starbucks at 164 7th Avenue.

(PRWEB) March 27, 2005 -- Ah Spring! The start of baseball season and the end of tax time drudgery is celebrated in Alexandra Corbin's "The Boys of Summer" exhibit, part of a captivating group of figurative works in paper intarsia. The show opens with a reception April 15th, 6-9pm at the Park Slope Starbucks at 164 7th Avenue.

The crackerjack show, in previews beginning April 1st, highlights Ms Corbins artfully rendered testament to the gravity-defying 98 Yankees. Using an intricate technique she devised called paper intarsia, the works serve as a cheerful reminder of the indomitable New York spirit embodied by The Boys."

Ms Corbin describes intarsia as an olio of painting, collage,mosaic, and drawing that requires a good pencil, really sharp scissors,and the patience to watch a thing take shape very, very slowly." Using the finest scissors to negotiate tiny cuts on hand-colored rag paper, she creates individual snippets which are then painstakingly assembled to form complete images without so much as a single overlapping edge.

Long bemoaning the fact that much of the "art" she was seeing these days appeared hastily thrown together, Ms Corbin found the antidote and her

inspiration in wood marquetry, popular among Renaissance artisans, and in the intricate paper floral cutouts by Mary Delany, a late 18th century matron whose knack for observation and minutiae, according to Ms. Corbin, resulted in just about the best art I had seen in a very long time.

Many discount the work of these men and women as pure technique. But study their work closely and you'll begin to understand and admire the degree of their genius. Here they were, teaching any of us who cared to learn how to slow down the pace of production and to celebrate the beauty of line and color." Carefully considered choices have to be made when creating a piece, but thats what Ms. Corbin likes most about the languorous process. You cant keep pasting down and removing these fragile bits of paper. Youve got to know what will work, make a decision, and stick with it."

Indeed, one cannot help but marvel at how her flipping, flying Yankees or her stately, static nudes are, on close inspection, made up of the

subtlest transitions in color and shape from one exactingly cut snippet of paper to the next. The Three Descending Nudes," alone, took a month,

maybe more, states Ms Corbin. Figuring out how to turn an arm by having to choose and place the perfect fragment of paper in just the right hue,

green or violet, teaches you a lot about shading and drawing."

Ms. Corbin is currently a producer and developer of childrens programming, and has designed a number of award-winning educational tools. She is an author, formerly Director of Research at the New York Historical Society and professor of studio and art history at New York and Cornell Universities. For fun, she teaches high school art classes and follows the Yankees very, very closely...

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