Andrea Kornbluth:
Inwood Intaglio

On view at Indian Road Café through March 3, 2018
Presented by Jason Minter and Indian Road Shows. Curated by Jeff Hoppa.

Charmed and cursed is how Andrea Kornbluth describes the process of Intaglio printmaking, specifically the plates used in the process. Intaglio is a painstaking process of chance where an image is incised onto a metal plate. The incised lines hold the ink that create the image on paper. The resulting print could work, and if so the plate is “charmed”, or could not, and so the plate is “cursed” and the process begins again. I sat down with Andrea Kornbluth recently to talk about her influences, and what led her to printmaking over coffee at the Capital Restaurant on Broadway in Inwood.

Korrnbluth’s work is a synthesis of her life experiences. She has lived in Inwood for 8 years, and while she grew up in Forest Hill, Queens, her father grew up in Inwood, on Nagle Avenue. She also spent eight years living and working in Japan, observing the work of a master conservator of lacquer work in exchange for translation services. It was this experience – the slow and painstaking work, the tools used in conservation coupled with a B.A. in Art History and Asian Studies from Cornell University and an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University that led her to an interest in intaglio printmaking, which she studied at the Art Students League in New York. Kornbluth also has an interest in American prints from the W.P.A. era. It is at the Art Students League, where she studied the Intaglio process, that she works on her prints, using their facilities on Sundays, the only time she gets during the week (Kornbluth also holds a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and is in house counsel and US representative for the firm she works for during the week) to spend time on her art.

Another of Kornbluth’s inspirations is her love of community, evident in the way she imbues her urban landscapes with a delicacy of line, like a series of visual poems to the neighborhood she has called home for the past 8 years, the same neighborhood her father called home growing up. Further evidence of her love of her neighborhood is her rose as Secretary and Acting Treasurer of the non-profit Conservancy North.

Northern Manhattan is fortunate to have Andrea Kornbluth as a member of the community for many reasons, and if my words haven’t convinced you, visit Indian Road Café and you’ll see why.

For more information on seeing this exhibit:
https://heightsites.com/event/andrea-kornbluth-inwood-intaglio-exhibit-indian-road-shows-2018-02-18/2018-02-15/