Tracey Snelling’s miniature house sculptures are not doll houses by any means. The multimedia artist pours her obsession with horror films into her work, creating frightening ambiances in seemingly mundane settings. Lights and a soundtrack accompany each piece. While Snelling eschews using actual dolls or figurines to populate her tiny worlds, movie clips on LCD screens or film stills animate the windows of the small houses, usually endowing them with a sense of mystery or foreboding.
Snelling’s latest series of house sculptures — which are made using a combination of wood, acrylic paint and found objects — focus on lonely roadside motels and backwoods houses. Inspired by road trips that took her across the country as a child, Snelling investigates the ways these settings have served as the sites of supernatural happenings in American pop culture and lore. These works will appear in her solo show, “Mystery Hour,” at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco opening December 19 and will also be on view at Miami Project December 3-8 with the same gallery. Take a look at our photos from a visit to Tracey Snelling’s studio below.
Detail with video component
Detail with video component
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