Diane Arbus Photographing the Doppelgänger Twins" Images © 2011 Sally Stockhold All rights reserved
"Photographer Sally Stockhold startles with her staged self-portraits"
By Kyle MacMillan Denver Post Fine Arts Critic Posted: 06/17/2011
After a career in commercial photography and film in New York City, Sally Stockhold is enjoying a new chapter in her life as something of a cult figure on the Denver art scene.
Her central focus has been a group of self-portraits in which she photographs herself as famous and infamous artistic, historical and literary figures, ranging from Ayn Rand and Leni Riefenstahl to Alice Neel and Diane Arbus .
For each of these complex, partially hand-colored compositions, she assembles elaborate sets that often incorporate impeccably crafted backdrops and props that would be worth showing on their own.
Forty-one of Stockhold's under-recognized photographs — her largest exhibition to date — are on view at Pattern Shop Studio, an alternative art space at 3349 Blake Street, Denver, Colorado.
Some curators and other art insiders have been leery of these images because they are contrived, stagey and a little bizarre, but it is exactly those qualities — all intended by the artist — that make them so intriguing.
In fact, it does not seem much of a stretch to count Stockhold among the most daring and original photographers at work in Denver."
A review of Icebreaker3 by Christopher Fox
Posted by Icecubes on Sunday, February 12, 2012
Icebreaker3: Review
Raise your glass to Ice Cube Gallery on 33rd & Walnut, because Icebreaker3, on display through February 25th, deserves a toast. With over 500 submitted works to choose from, juror Gwen Chanzit (curator of modern and contemporary collections at the Denver Art Museum) certainly could have taken any perspective she wanted. But it’s clear that she worked closely with Ice Cube and wisely chose artistic vision as the thread that ties each artist to the next on display, and the mix works.
We were also glad to see that Gwen Chanzit juried in “Diane Arbus photographing the Doppelganger twins,” by Sally Stockhold. Stockhold’s “Myselfportraits” series, with new works in the series displayed almost annually at Spark Gallery since 2006, is in our humble opinion one of the most significant bodies of work in the genre of photographic self-portraits a living Denver artist has produced. That’s primarily because the scope of her project has been an immensely time-consuming affair, but also because she’s fabulously talented when it comes to self-analysis. The amount of energy and time she puts into each scenario is admirable, and they always reveal different aspects of her personality in a slightly humorous, self-mocking way—she’s always engaged and actively analyzing, but it never feels tortured or burdensome.