Joan Steiner's cozy corners

I was in Miami last week, attending the invite-only Knight Media Forum! Hosted by the Knight Foundation, this annual conference brings innovators in local news, civic leaders, and philanthropy together to network and discuss journalism’s future.

Below the fold, I’ll share what I learned at the conference and tell you a story about meeting the journalist Georgia Fort, who was arrested by federal agents on Jan. 18 in Minnesota for her reporting.

Before my trip to Miami, I paid a visit to the Albany Institute’s retrospective of Blanche Lazzell’s modernist works, and of course I had to wander around to see the dioramas of the late Joan Steiner.

The museum’s staff and volunteers restore and install them throughout the galleries each year, and it’s no easy process. Seat cushions made out of Ritz crackers, window dressing made out of lasagna noodles – “Every year, there are a few things we need to replace, so we’re always on the lookout for items that are the right scale,” Diane Shewchuk, the museum’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, told the Times Union in 2021.

“For example, the ravioli pillows on one of the sofas didn’t survive, and it’s very hard to find that exact size of ravioli. One year, two cookies in the ‘Nutcracker’ scene fell and left a butter stain on the paper floor, so we had to have an object conservator come in and create a fake Oriental carpet to cover the stain,” Shewchuk said.

In this short video about her process, Joan explains that “We photograph the scenes, and the photographs become the illustrations for my ‘Look-Alikes’ books. The challenge of the books is to find all of the hidden objects. And most of the scenes have more than a hundred. Sometimes, I also convert the scenes into dioramas which I also display, and people really enjoy seeing the original artwork.”

At the Albany Institute, there are 10 dioramas on view through March 1, and each has a tiny cozy corner that will make it on my upcoming Comfy Map Of Cozy Corners, for sure.

Joan was an artist and illustrator who lived in Claverack, New York, and her popular “Look-Alikes” series of children’s books has sold more than one million copies in 16 languages.

Her first book in the series – “Super Look-Alikes: The More You Look, The More You See!” was published in 1998 and named a book of the year by several publications.

She lived, worked, and died (in 2010 of cancer) just down the road from where I live, and since I can’t reach out and get to know her myself, I called up a friend of mine who knew Joan personally from her Hudson days.

When I posted photos of the dioramas to Instagram, Lisa Durfee, who owns the vintage store Five and Diamond in Hudson, and who is herself an artist who builds miniature worlds, commented that she used to play Scrabble with Joan every Monday for years.

I called Lisa up to see if she could share more about her time with Joan. It turns out, Lisa met Joan at Lisa’s own housewarming party. And while she says she didn’t know Joan especially intimately, she says Joan was quite the competitive Scrabble player.

Here’s Lisa’s recollections of Joan, edited from our interview for clarity.