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CORONET
"INFINITE RICHES IN A LITTLE ROOM"

DIRECT FROM LIFE
ONE WRONG CHIP MEANS RUIN, BUT CORNELIA CHAPIN DIGS ANIMALS STRAIGHT OUT OF STONE

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SHE works in a perfect studio that hangs back about fifty feet from the traffic on New York's 38th Street. The studio once belonged to Gutzon Borglum, so it is quite colossal. Cornelia Van A. Chapin works in the center of the room Surrounding her are portraits in stone of frogs, penguins, turtles, guinea pigs, camels. She means to pay herself no tribute when she says that the eyes of these creatures of her own hand and imagination often make her feel self-conscious and under restraint, as though she were constantly being watched. 

She held a one-man show at the Fifteen Gallery last April. The preface to her catalog was written by the Spanish sculptor Mateo Hernandez, who paid his tribute this way: "Direct carving is the most powerful means, among all the methods employed by sculptors to reveal with vigor the true personality of the artist. And in Cornelia Chapin we have one woman who has had the daring, the admirable energy and discipline to practice the technique of direct carving from life in uncompromising blocks of hard stone and wood."

Hernandez can speak thus with pride, for he was Miss Chapin's teacher-and with authority, for he is among the greatest of the "direct carvers." Direct carving means that the sculptor does not use any clay or plaster models;

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Cornelia Van A. Chapin

AUGUST, 1938
103

AUGUST, 1938
THIRTY-FIVE CENTS
IN GREAT BRITAIN 2/6