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Sandy Skoglund is one of the most innovative photographers of the 20th and 21st century.
Sandy Skoglund creates surrealist images by building elaborate sets or tableaux, furnishing them with carefully selected colored furniture and other objects, a process of which takes her months to complete. Finally, she photographs the set, complete with actors wearing characterized by an overwhelming amount of one object and either bright, contrasting colors or a monochromatic color scheme.
Born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1946, Skoglund studied both art history and studio art at at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1968. In 1967, she studied art history at the Sorbonne and Ecole Du Louvre in Paris, France. After graduating from Smith College, she went to graduate school at the University in Iowa in 1969, where she studied filmmaking, multimedia art, and printmaking. In 1971, she earned her Master of Arts and in 1972 and a Master of Fine Arts in painting.
In 1972, Skoglund began working as a conceptual artist in New York. She became interested in teaching herself photography to document her artistic endeavors, experimenting with themes of repetition. In 1978, she had produced a series of repetitious food item still life images.
One of her most-known photographs, entitled Radioactive Cats, features green-painted clay cats running amuck in a forest green 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. Another image, Fox Games has a similar feel to Radioactive Cats and is also widely recognized. A third and final oft-recognized piece by her features several fish, hoovering above people in bed late at night and is called Revenge of the Goldfish.
Skoglund was an art professor at the University of Hartford between 1973 and 1976. She is currently teaching photography and art installation/multimedia at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Links
Revenge of the Goldfish (http://www.origrafica.com/ovriga/reven.jpg)
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