Special effects

Sandy Skoglund makes a scene

by Leon Nigrosh

SANDY SKOGLUND: REALITY UNDER SIEGE At the Smith College Museum of Art, Elm Street, Northampton, through May 24.

Imagine how you might feel if you woke up in a turquoise bed in a turquoise bedroom and found yourself completely surrounded by giant iridescent orange goldfish. Then you rushed into the bathroom only to step on thousands of eggshells while being confronted by dozens of snakes and rabbits. Artist Sandy Skoglund has imagined many incongruous situations like these and has reconstructed four life-size versions of them in the galleries of the Smith College Museum of Art.

Installation art has been around since the early 20th century when the Surrealists, including Salvador Dalí, created and exhibited a series of bizarre environments. In the 1960s, artists like Edward Keinholz and Claes Oldenburg constructed large interior tableaus designed to elicit a sense of despair or unreality. In each case, the artists considered the actual installation as the end point of their endeavor. For Skoglund, on the other hand, the physical installation is just another step in her long and often complex process toward the realization of her artistic vision.

Thirty years ago, Skoglund emerged from Smith College with a piece of paper that said she was an artist, but she didn't really feel like one. For several years, she made paintings and a series of densely constructed analytical drawings, but she continued to be dissatisfied. "I was looking for a transcendental feeling. Instead, I found boredom."

In the late '70s, she took up photography. But unlike the realist photographers who took pictures of what they saw, Skoglund began to assemble disparate items into a series of still lifes which includes the self-explanatory Peaches in a Toaster and Toaster, a singularly odd presentation of the kitchen appliance and a baby doll. It wasn't long before Skoglund began to build entire rooms to use a subject material for her photographic images.

It is this approach to her work that sets her apart from both the installation artists and most photographers. Whereas most installation artists use photos to record their temporary works, Skoglund, who appeared last year at the Worcester Art Museum to talk about her methods, creates sculptures and designs her dioramas specifically to be the focus of her photos. The final placement of each object in a particular arrangement is actually determined while she looks through her camera viewfinder.

The SCMA has arranged Skoglund's original photographs next to each installation so that viewers can make their own firsthand comparison. One thing that is immediately noticeable is that the graphically colored photos are populated with live models purposely absent in the environment as reconstructed. This arrangement invites questions about which is the real art -- the photo or the tableau. Skoglund says that it is neither. Instead, she sees the art as being the total process involving the research for the project, the sculptures specifically constructed for in the installation, the arrangement itself, and the photographic images all working together as a larger particular statement.

An impressive example of this process is Fox Games. Composed of 27 life-size sculptures of foxes caught in different expressive poses among 10 dining tables completely decorated with flowers, tableware, and baskets of rolls, the original photograph has red foxes in a gray restaurant also populated with two human diners and a waiter. Reassembled as the only walk-in installation in the current exhibition, Skoglund has completely reversed the color arrangement. The entire restaurant is red (even the kaiser rolls have been painted) and all the foxes are gray. As our eyes become adjusted to the overpowering redness of the light, originally unnoticed objects eerily appear. The fox-fur shoulder wrap found in the photo is draped over a chair. The chandelier magically comes into view, along with the blank picture frame, and the one nearly hidden, still-red fox.

The crowning achievement is Walking on Eggshells. The diorama is made up of thousands of real eggshells spread tightly around cast paper bathroom fixtures, while cast resin rabbits and snakes cavort restlessly over the entire installation. Thousands of cast paper tiles line the walls, each imprinted with one of 45 historical images of snakes or rabbits, including the Egyptian snake god of chaos, a bare-breasted Minoan snake priestess, an Aztec warrior rabbit, the head of Medusa, and an American Easter bunny on a basket. The original photo and available poster feature two young women delicately making their way through this scene.

The images in Skoglund's installations, photos, and lithographs are rife with all manner of political, sexual, social, and psychological import. But Skoglund leaves the meaning of all of this up to us to decide. For her, the meaning and satisfaction of her work is simply the discovery of the elements, the challenge of producing the sculptures, and the combined acts of assembly and picture-taking. Or so she says.

The Smith College Museum of Art is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursday from noon to 8 p.m.; and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Call (413) 585-2760.