Tracey Snelling: A Sort of Homecoming
Art Statement (abbreviated)
Driving down the street at night, I look at the lit windows of the houses that I pass and wonder who
lives there. What is taking place behind that drawn window shade? A tired motel sign along the side
of the highway still buzzes and beckons travelers to come stay in one of the faded rooms. An old
furniture store on a street in a forgotten downtown is dark and the sofas are covered with dust.
I want to know the stories of the people who once inhabited these areas. Through video, sound,
and manipulation of size, I am not trying to replicate a place; rather I give my impression of a
place, its people and their experience, and allow the viewer to extrapolate his or her own meaning.
Delta Center for the Arts LH Horton Jr Gallery presents the installation work of Tracey Snelling,
a graduate of San Joaquin Delta College and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, in
Studio Arts with an emphasis in photography, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 1996. Exhibiting
both nationally and internationally, exhibitions include solo shows in Brussels and Smack Mellon
in Brooklyn, her recent 10-year retrospective at the Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, and
a large installation at the Sundance Film Festival, a show at the Kunsthallen Brandt in Denmark, and
a traveling show at Frist Museum in Nashville and the Southern Center for Contemporary Art in
Winston-Salem. In addition, she was an artist-in-residence in 2008 at the Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing.
