The bellman will bring your psychological baggage up to your room, Sir

Artist’s informal presentation, 6:30 p.m. - 8 p.m., Monday; Free; W Atlanta-Midtown hotel

www.solomonprojects.com

When you try to run away from your issues they are usually waiting for you when you arrive at your destination, and sometimes they loom larger than they did before you fled.

That’s the notion behind Atlanta photographer Sarah Hobbs’ new exhibit “Overpacked,” which opens Sunday at the W Atlanta-Midtown hotel. Hobbs has transformed three of the hotel’s rooms into manifestations of people’s phobias and worries, which only seem to grow when they travel.

What do germaphobes do when they check in to a space that they cannot control? Hobbs’ answer is that they might wrap every single thing in plastic, like the old slipcovers that protected the “good” furniture in the living room from messy children or careless guests.

And what about the person who worries that everything single thing about a trip will go wrong, from a misplaced suitcase to a break-in back home? How does that person transform the hotel suite to assuage the fear?

Hobbs has addressed obsessions and eccentricities in her still photography for years. She creates a neutral, often generic domestic space — a foyer, a dining room — then loads the space with evidence of impulses that control or thwart us. So, a dining room is filled with packages wrapped in Tiffany blue paper and white ribbons, suggesting the tendency toward indulgence. A corner of a closet is papered floor to ceiling with the piercing gazes of hundreds of eyes. Yes, someone is watching you all the time.

“Overpacked” is a 3-D experience of her work, each of the three hotel rooms offering a different revelation of private anxieties.

Hobbs began the project two years ago. In between, the first book of her work was published, “Small Problems in Living,”(Charta Books Milan), and she did her first sculpture project, “Flight in Place,” at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta. “Overpacked” is her second sculpture project. She will give an artist’s talk Monday evening at the installation, though she promises she will reveal none of her own compunctions about travel.

“I don’t have any issues with traveling, but for some people that can be a paralyzing thing, going into a space that’s going to be your home for a few days but that you can’t control,” Hobbs said. “When we travel we don’t leave our issues behind.”