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"Pictures on Exhibit"
April 1938

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CORNELIA VAN A. CHAPIN

The Art of Direct Carving

Visitors of the Vincennes Zoo, outside of Paris, used to see a woman trundling a little three wheel wagon. It might have been a refreshment cart, except that its contents consisted of a block of white marble and the assorted paraphernalia of the sculptor's craft. The woman was Cornelia Van A. Chapin, American sculptress, and the block of marble eventually took the form of a Pelican- one of the direct carvings in Miss Chapin's current exhibition at the Fifteen Gallery.
Carving the subject direct from life, rather than building it up in clay, is so fascinating to her that she doesn't mind the enormous trouble it involves in the matter of getting and manipulating the necessary materials. And if it means bringing her studio to the pelican, Miss Chapin will do just that. A tortoise carved in volcanic rock and a penguin, carved from like in black granite, were similarly produced.
After preliminary study under American sculptors, Miss Chapin went to Paris in 1934 to learn direct carving from the Spaniard, Mateo Hernandez, who is considered by many people to be the greatest living exponent of this difficult art. "He had re-created for himself, "Miss Chapin says," in the mountain fastnesses of Spain the art of the ancients; carving direct from life in stone, with no making of models beforehand. This meant long hours of contemplation of the living model before touching the block of granite or marble, then cutting painstakingly into the stone- the work all done by hand, from the first roughing out to the final polishing."
Cornelia Chapin is descended from early Dutch settlers, who, as everyone knows, carved quite a community for themselves out of a rock then known as Nieuw Amsterdam. With mallet and chisel she carries on the tradition, though her community is made up mostly of friendly animals from the zoo

Charles Z. Offin

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