Izzo: Nostalgia For The Unknown

The work of artist Joseph Cornell has long been a fascination of mine. Cornell was famous for his boxed assemblages in which he would create haunting, surreal pieces by arranging disparate objects, such as Victorian dolls, coins, sheet music, etc. into incredible works of art.

He lived all of his life in NYC. Other than a three year stint in MA. he never left NY, yet his art deals with the faraway and impossible. What speaks to me about this is the sense of nostalgia for things, people and places that he never directly experienced; a nostalgia for the unknown.

I feel a certain kinship toward Cornell's aesthetic.  I have a tendency to use small unpromising bits of ideas that I juxtapose into what I hope becomes an interesting musical statement, much like the bric-a-brac that he collected for his work.

Also, I realize that I've been addressing the themes of nostalgia, melancholy and escapism in my music. It's taken time to formulate these connections in relation to Joseph Cornell's work, but I feel that I now have a way to address these themes head on in the piece that I'll be writing.

Learn more about Joseph Cornell here: http://josephcornell.org/