Emily Dickinson, American artist Joseph Cornell’s enduring muse, wrote that “nature is a haunted house, but art is a house that tries to be haunted.” As the current occupant of Cornell’s South Nyack birthplace, Sylvia Roth describes the creative output of subsequent generations of her family, and others who have lived here, one begins to suspect that this is a house haunted by art.
I got to visit Cornell’s birthplace for the first time this week, delivering my illustration that accompanied this column. It will now hang on the walls of this home that has provided inspiration for so many.
Here’s my 2014 interview with Roth and also my discovery of another connection between Cornell and the Nyacks.