"Open House: New Work by Sa Schloff"
2001-04-07 until 2001-06-03
Portland Museum of Art
Portland, ME, USA

Portland Museum of Art inaugurates an exciting new series of exhibitions that combine the creative spirit of contemporary photography with the classical elegance of historic architecture. Open House is a series of eight exhibitions featuring new photographic works inspired by the McLellan-Sweat House (1800-01) and L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries (1911). These structures comprise the Museum’s historic precinct, currently being restored and scheduled to re-open to the public in 2002.

Eight selected artists are given access to the buildings throughout the restoration process, creating art that reinterprets the spaces while giving Museum visitors visual access to the transforming work that is going on behind closed doors. Artists involved in the project include Jonathan Bailey, Paul D'Amato, Tonee Harbert, Rose Marasco, Tanja Alexia Hollander, and Bernard C. Meyers. The first exhibition in the series, focuses on new work by Sa Schloff.

Sa Schloff, whose work is also being featured in the 2001 Portland Museum of Art Biennial, is an Assistant Professor of Photography at the Maine College of Art. She began to make color images of interiors shortly after her exhibition Sa Schloff: Portrait Gallery, which was on view at the Museum last spring. Schloff's interiors, like her portraits, seem to be suspended in time, allowing the viewer to explore his or her emotional reactions to, and intellectual assumptions about, the place represented.

Schloff's interiors are unoccupied yet seem to be inhabited by a rich psychological presence. Her work in the McLellan-Sweat House and L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, begun before the spaces were closed in October 2000, seems to capture the ghostly presence of more than 200 years of inhabitants and visitors in these magnificent historic structures.

IMAGE:
Sa Schloff
Green Room, 2000,
c-print,
Courtesy of the artist. (Sa Schloff)

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Maine

Other Important Exhibitions in Portland