ALBANY, NY - Hudson artist and award-winning illustrator Joan Steiner show at the New York State Museum her new exhibition -- Look-Alikes: The Amazing World of Joan Steiner.  Open through March 2, 2008 in the Museum’s Crossroads Gallery, the exhibition provides a close-up look at the 3-D miniature scenes Stein creates, using everyday objects, such as dog biscuits, toothpaste caps, pencils, buttons, soda straws and peanuts.  The exhibition includes original dioramas, as well as photo blowups, of the scenes used in her three books – “Look-Alikes: The More You Look, the More You See,” “Look-Alikes Christmas” and “Look-Alikes Jr.” (Little, Brown and Company).  Visitors also will get an advance look at dioramas and illustrations from her next book, “Look-Alikes Around the World,” which will be published in the fall.

A brief documentary about Steiner and her work will also be shown continuously in the Crossroads Gallery through March 2008.  There also will be a space set aside for parents and children to sit down together to look through the books and hunt for everyday objects.  More than 1,000 “look-alikes” can be found in Steiner’s first book and more than 700 in the Christmas version, which took three and a half years to complete. She painstakingly constructs everyday objects just as they appear.  In a “Sweet Shop” scene chairs are built of pretzels and crackers.  Pennies become cobblestones in a park scene and a shoehorn serves as a slide.  In other illustrations, venetian blinds appear as the siding on a house, lasagna noodles serve as draperies, gloves become a sofa and a balloon transforms into a red dress.

A resident of Claverack with a studio in Hudson, Steiner is a self-taught artist who graduated from Barnard College. She started out designing one-of-a-kind wearable art pieces, including purses that resembled boom boxes and ice skates, and a hat shaped like a fishing boat with a veil for a net.  Although her whimsical pieces sold well she began searching for something more lucrative.

Her big break came when she approached Games magazine about using one of her illustrations. They told her to let them know if she could think of a game and she called back 20 minutes later offering them a puzzle where everyday objects would be hidden in the scenes she’d create.  The illustrations published in Games attracted the attention of Sesame Street magazine, which asked for a similar illustration.  Since then her illustrations have also appeared in the New York Times and Nickelodeon Magazine. Steiner’s books have sold more than one million copies and have been published in 16 countries around the world.  She has won numerous art and design awards, including a Society of Illustrators Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Department of Education, the University of the State of New York and the Office of Cultural Education. Started in 1836, the Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. The State Museum is located on Madison Avenue in Albany.  It is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.  Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.