Comparison of New and Old Contemporary Art

Sandy Skoglund has been in the forefront of contemporary art in the United States, as well as overseas, for nearly two decades. Her dramatic impact to the art world didn’t begin overnight. After sheer dedication to art education she received her BA degree in Studio Art in 1968 from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Upon getting her BA, she pursued further education at the University of Iowa where she received her MD. With her remarkable educational background, Skoglund decided to expand her horizons by teaching. Her teaching career grew at a rapid pace and she found herself teaching at the University of Hartford from 1973 to 1976. In late 1976, she was offered a position at Rutgers University, New Jersey, and has been teaching there ever since.

She has been giving her expertise in the form of photography and the art of installation and multi- media for fourteen years now, and she doesn’t plan on giving it up anytime soon. As Skoglund began to see that the sky was the limit, along with teaching, she decided to experiment with illustration and commercial images.

The advancement in these areas had been a lifelong dream. Merely overnight, Skoglund’s career blossomed and her sole purpose in all of this was to make people see and feel her brilliant expression in a way that they could easily relate to. Over the years Ms. Skoglund has created an art that seems to bash modern day reality as we know it.

Ms. Skoglund has had tremendous success in the art world. Just in the past two decades, she has accumulated sixty eight solo exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and, of course, the United States. Some of her works include “Radioactive Cats”, “Fox Games”, “Walking on Eggshells”, and “Shimmering Madness”.

After seeing Ms. Skoglund’s work in the book Artforms, I was totally clueless as to what she was expressing. The particular illustration I’m referring to is “Revenge of the Goldfish”. If the name alone sets you back, don’t worry you’re not the only one. She has an eerie way of taking ordinary things, fish in this case, and forming a scene in which no one could possibly think of.

Now that I have done my research on Ms. Skoglund, I have found an irresistible urge to see her work. One thing I like the most about her artwork is that you never know what you are going to get next. Her creativity is absolutely endless. Life magazine listed her as one the world’s top 100 photographers and she has received numerous achievement awards for her continued superiority in the creative world of art.

She joking stated, “I feel I’ve succeeded when a museum guard comes in and stares at my exhibitions”. I feel as though she has succeeded beyond belief and with being 54 years of age, her will and drive to create new ideas is stronger than ever. A columnist from The Cincinnati Enquirer, Owen Findsen, states it best, “Ms. Skoglud is the rarest artist who has found a voice so unique that it needs a category all it’s own.” The only thing that I would like to add to that would be that Sandy Skoglund has become a creative genius and she continues to astonish the public with her spectacular gift.