Quincy, Mass. native and Smith College alumna Sandy Skoglund began the work she is known for today in the late ’70s, after completing undergraduate and graduate degrees. Her desire to capture conceptual subject matter led Skoglund to teach herself photography, a skill she then fused with commercial photography techniques (like set building) and her interest in pop culture. She is now best known for large format Cibachrome photographs of room-sized sculptural installations.
These images and installations are terrifically unsettling jaunts into the slightly unfamiliar. Skoglund’s mélanges of the known and unknown create worlds that feel as if you’ve opened a door to another dimension. In conjunction with the artist’s 40th reunion at Smith, the installation of Skoglund’s best known work, “Radioactive Cats” (pictured), is on display along with other photographs. “Radioactive Cats” consists of a gray room filled with glowing green cats perched on various surfaces. A large photo titled “Walking on Eggshells” hangs on a perpendicular wall. The piece features two nude women in a bathroom with a floor made of eggshells. The walls are tiled with not-quite Egyptian-looking ideograms, along with life-sized sculptures of rabbits and snakes facing off throughout the room.
Through Sept. 7, Smith College Museum of Art , Elm Street, Northampton, (413) 585-2760, www.smith.edu/artmuseum.
