Joseph Cornell was born to a modest, Dutch, New Yorker family in 1903. Though the family lived in Nyack, Cornell's parents found time to take Joseph and his two younger sisters and brother to Manhattan. Overall, Cornell's childhood was filled with art: he was exposed to opera, theatre, musical performances, fairy tales, poetry, and painting. In 1917 hardship fell on the family when Joseph Cornell Sr. died of leukemia. Immense emotional and financial strain forced the family to downsize to a home in Douglaston, Long Island.

The same year of his father's death and the move to Long Island, Cornell's mother enrolled him in Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. It was here where many of the themes in Cornell's artwork began to develop. Cornell studied poetry, French, and astronomy – all of which are subjects that would later influence his work and involve him in the art world. He also began working at a Massachusetts textile mill over the summer, hoarding spare pieces of glass. This acts as evidence to his growing addiction to collecting and possibly traces to early ideas of incorporating glass in his artwork.

After high school, Cornell worked to support his family and single mother. Though he did not have the money to attend college or formally study art, Cornell still stockpiled artifacts and spent his spare time developing pieces. When the Great Depression fell upon America, Cornell lost his job and decided to devote more time to his artwork. Amidst all this Cornell joined the Christian Science church, deepening his interest in the cosmos as a spiritual entity. This idea would later manifest itself in much of Cornell's work.

With time to dedicate to his craft, Cornell thoroughly explored Manhattan, collecting an enormous amount of odds and ends along the way. In 1931 he discovered something even more important: surrealism. Cornell was first introduced to the movement at the Julien Levy Gallery which would later feature some of his own work. The surrealist obsession with the dream and juxtaposing objects in unfamiliar surroundings to give them new meaning dovetailed with some of Cornell's preexisting work that dealt with his isolation and family troubles. From this point on, Cornell would begin to create the objects, collages, and shadow boxes most commonly associated with his name.

Though Joseph Cornell was not widely known at his death in 1972, interest in his life and detailed shadow boxes has grown tremendously over the years. By creating sculptural pieces, Cornell forced his viewers to comprehend objects in a completely new space – one that differed considerably from the two-dimensional surrealist paintings of the time. The raw quality of the images and objects Cornell used said equal amounts about Cornell and the society he lived in.

His work served as inspiration for larger names like Rauschenberg and Warhol, and has equally captured me. During the fall of 2010 I created three shadow boxes inspired by Cornell but filled with my own images, thoughts, and symbolism. Though my pieces certainly took on a character of their own, connections can be drawn between the appearance of both sets of shadow boxes. Each one of my boxes has a specific element that is directly linked to Cornell's pieces. My “Love Box" examines human nature and relationships, an element found in Cornell's boxes that depict people in surreal environments and situations. My “Wisdom Box" is based on the imagery and symbolism of the owl, something found in a few of Cornell's pieces along with a whole menagerie of birds in general. Lastly, my “Adventure Box" (and some parts of the others) feature maps and images of the cosmos, a theme that dominates Cornell's artwork.

Sources:

Costello, Bonnie. Planets on Tables: Poetry, Still Life, and the Turning World. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008. Print.

Blair, Lindsay. Joseph Cornell's Vision of Spiritual Order. London: Reaktion, 1998. Print.

Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe. Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination. New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 2008. Print.

Waldman, Diane. Joseph Cornell: Master of Dreams. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002. Print.

McShine, Kynaston, and Dawn Ades. Joseph Cornell. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980. Print.