Background

Sandy Skoglund was born on September 11, 1946, in Weymouth, Massachusetts, United States. She spent her childhood all over the country, including the states Maine, Connecticut and California.

Education

Skoglund studied studio art and art history at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1964 to 1968. In 1967-1969, she studied art history through the college's study abroad program at Sorbonne University and École du Louvre in Paris, France. Then, in 1969, Sandy went on to graduate school at the University of Iowa, where she studied filmmaking, intaglio printmaking and multimedia art, receiving her Master of Arts degree in 1971 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting in 1972.

Career

It was in 1972, that Sandy began her career as a conceptual artist, working in New York City. At that time, she began dealing with repetitive, process-oriented art production through the techniques of mark-making and photocopying.

In the late seventies, Skoglund's desire to document conceptual ideas led her to teach herself photography. This developing interest in photographic technique became fused with her interest in popular culture and commercial picture making strategies, resulting in the directorial tableau work she is known for today.

Initially, Skoglund worked with food items against colorful and patterned backgrounds. It was her means to develop a universal language - without a doubt everyone eats. The intention to use food as a subject was to create a connection with the spectators of her work. Today, people are injecting various chemicals into food items to give them a different appeal, for example, by using artificial colorings to stimulate the appearance of vegetables and fruits. In advertisements, photography is used as a tool to capture the enhancements of looks in something. For example, oily coatings are used to give shine to food surfaces or dimethicone is applied to reproduce sweat on a chilled glass. This is why Skoglund had a fondness in studying and working with food since there is a plethora of options to re-create something.

It was in 1978, that Sandy created a series of repetitious still life images of food items. In 1980, she made one of her best-known works, titled "Radioactive Cats". This work features green-painted clay cats, running amok in a gray kitchen. An older man sits in a chair with his back, facing the camera, while his elderly wife looks into a refrigerator, that is the same color as the walls.

It was in 1981, that Skoglund created the work "Revenge of the Goldfish", in which many fish are suspended above people, positioned on bed late at night. The image was featured in the cover album of "Inspiral Carpets", an alternative rock band. In 1990, Sandy finished her work, entitled "Fox Games". This piece is somewhat following a similar theme as the one, titled "Radioactive Cats".

In 1998, Sandy completed her work "Shimmering Madness". This work features thousands of multi-colored silk and Mylar butterflies on a black background, as well as multi-colored jellybeans, that cover the floor and the figures. In 2008, Skoglund finished working on the series, titled "True Fiction Two", which is similar to the "True Fiction" series, that she began working on in 1986. However, the series wasn't finished due to the discontinuation of materials, that Sandy was using. Kodak canceled the production of the dye, that the artist used for her prints.

Sandy's solo exhibitions and projects include those, held at the Joseloff Gallery in Hartford, Connecticut (1973), the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1982), Galerie Watari in Tokyo, Japan (1984), Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, California (1987), Damon Brandt Gallery, New York City, New York (1988), Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio (1991), Galeria Spectrum in Zaragoza, Spain (1995), the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio (1999), Museo d’arte della Provincia di Nuoro in Sardinia, Italy (2000), Rule Gallery in Denver, Colorado (2002, 2012), the New York Hall of Science, New York City, New York (2004), Galerie Rabouan Moussion in Paris, France (2005), Palazzo Giovanelli in Venice, Italy (2009), the McNay Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas (2011), Ooh Gallery San Fermo Maggiore in Verona, Italy (2014), Ryan Lee gallery in New York City, New York (2020) and others.

The artist has also taken part in many group exhibitions, including "Invitational", 55 Mercer Gallery in New York City, New York (1977), "Pictures: Photographs", Castelli Graphics Gallery in New York City, New York (1979), "New American Color Photography", the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, England (1981), "The Magic of the Image: From the Permanent Collection", the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal, Canada (1986), Biennale de Marseille, Le Musée de Marseille in Marseille, France (1990), "Work in Progress", the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Mississippi (1995), "Visions from America: Photographs from the Whitney Museum of American Art", the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, New York (2002), "C Photo in New York", Phillips de Pury Exhibition Gallery in New York City, New York (2007), "Four Photographers", Mary Ryan Gallery in New York City, New York (2011), "Camera Atomica", the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada (2015), among many others.

As for Sandy's teaching career, she served as a professor of Art at the University of Hartford between 1973 and 1976. Since 1976, she has taught photography and art installation/multimedia in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark. She also gave different lectures and workshops at various institutions, including New York Film Academy in New York City, New York; the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado; the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas; Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia; Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan; Parsons School of Design in New York City, New York; the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, and numerous others.

It's also worth saying, that, in 1992, Sandy was named Koopman Distinguished Chair in the Visual Arts (an annual artist-in-residency program) at Hartford Art School in Hartford.

Currently, Sandy lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Achievements

• Sandy Skoglund is a well-known conceptual artist, working in photography and installation. She is best known for her room-sized environments, sometimes peopled with models or mannequins, and often filled with animal sculptures, which also appear in her photographs and prints. Sandy's most notable works include "Radioactive Cats" (1980), "Revenge of the Goldfish" (1981), "Sock Situation" (1986), "Fox Games" (1990), "The Cocktail Party" (1992), "Shimmering Madness" (1998) and "Raining Pop Corn" (2001).
  
  Skoglund's works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and Japan, and photos of her artwork have been published in numerous artbooks, catalogues and magazines.
  
  Sandy attained a number of awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the New York State Foundation for the Arts Grant, the Trustees Award for Excellence from Rutgers University-Camden and Smith College Medal.
  
  Today, the artist's work is collected in numerous prominent institutions worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, the Chicago Art Museum in Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Gallery K.O.N.G. in Seoul, Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, the First National Bank of Minneapolis in Minneapolis, the National Foundation for Contemporary Art (FNAC) in Paris and many-many others.

Works

More photos

• installation

  • Two Plates of Corn

  • Cats in Paris

  • Babies at Paradise Pond

  • The Invisible Web

  • Radioactive Cats

  • At the Shore

  • The Wedding

  • Maybe Babies

  • Revenge of the Goldfish

  • The Green House

  • Breathing Glass

  • Fox Games

  • Sock Situation

  • The Cocktail Party

  • Shimmering Madness

  • Raining Pop Corn

  • Winter

  • Fresh Hybrid

  • Picnic on Wine

  • Walking on Eggshells

  • Gathering Paradise

  • A Breeze at Work

  • Germs are Everywhere

  • Patients and Nurses

  • Cubed Carrots and Kernels of Corn

Views

Sandy produces surrealist images by building elaborate sets or tableaux, furnishing them with carefully selected colored furniture and other objects, the process of which takes her months to complete. Finally, she photographs the set, which usually includes live models. The works are characterized by an overwhelming amount of one object and either bright, contrasting colors or a monochromatic color scheme.

Skoglund demonstrates a great ability to oppose reality to imagination. She mixes the artificial with the natural and this is the origin of her interest. She is attracted to some artificial objects so much, that her life depends on them. These are things like fragrant creams for skin, colorful and interesting fabrics and etc. For Sandy Skoglund, a world without artificial amplification is unthinkable.

Quotations: "My work involves the physical manifestation of emotional reality. Thus, the invisible becomes visible; the normal, abnormal; and the familiar, unfamiliar. Ordinary life is an endless source of fascination to me in its ritualistic objects and behavior."

"Obsession and repetition in the process of making things is one constant element in my work."

"The idea of making [conceptual] art was not a good way to approach things... Instead, I saw myself as trying to make something, that my relatives could understand."

"I think I am most fond of the unseen part. I mean that the various cultural experiences, that I go through, and the behavioral aspects of getting the work done, are just as important as the installation and the photograph. So, for me, the relationship between the two is more about hybridism and the search for an ideal form, that I'm never going to arrive at. The installation and the photograph are mere approximations of this ideal."

"If you could see a photograph of what it took to make an advertising photograph - things you don't think about, like the photo assistant carefully arranging the meatballs - the degree of unnaturalness would be astonishing. Yet it produces an image, that looks natural, and is orchestrated to provoke basic emotional responses."

"I consider myself fortunate, that photography exists, because otherwise I'd be stuck in the tragedy of ephemeralness, that can come with installation art."

"I think I'm really fortunate to be an installation artist, who is heavily invested in photography: I don't have the emotional problems with the loss of work, that some installation artists have. The photographs wouldn't exist without the installation... but at the same time, I think I'd kill myself if I only did installations. There's something deeply tragic about doing work that you know is temporal."

References

• Sandy Skoglund Art Site Home site of the artist Sandy Skoglund with images of recent work, including installation views.
• Sandy Skoglund This is a retrospective of Sandy Skoglund's work, published to accompany a touring exhibition from March 1998, at Smith College (Skoglund's alma mater) and then, successively over a two-year period, in Ohio (Cincinnati and Toledo), South Carolina (Columbia) and Florida (Jacksonville). Some of the works included in the book were created especially for the exhibition.
  1998