Cathy McClure
Wunderkammer
Traver Gallery is pleased to present Wunderkammer, a new exhibition of work by Seattle-based artist Cathy McClure. This upcoming exhibition, opening with a reception on Saturday, September 6, from 3–5 pm, brings together sculpture, painting, installation, and jewelry in a contemporary reinterpretation of the Wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonders.
Since 2003, McClure has dissected and reassembled mass-produced toys to expose their internal mechanisms, recasting them in precious metals. McClure describes her process as a kind of “Geppetto-like taxidermy,” unearthing value in the disregarded. Her curiosity-led approach, informed by a background in metalsmithing, is directly shaped by the profound loss of her childhood home to a tornado.
Her process, part excavation, part reconstruction, highlights cycles of consumption while revealing unexpected beauty in what was once disposable. With Wunderkammer, McClure invites viewers to enter a space where overlooked materials are transformed into specimens of significance, where narratives emerge from fragments, where the hidden histories of objects are unearthed and their imagined futures explored, where the transient becomes enduring.
Centering on a series of new bronze sculptures, constructed from meticulously cast mass-produced, battery-operated plush toys, she creates expressive, uncanny portraits that tell a story of reinvention, resilience, humor, and beauty. Her stoic bronze figures, with the weight of artifacts, stand in dialogue with a new installation of her “mutants” series – whimsical, kinetic, plastic sculptures reconfigured from the same salvaged source material–while works on paper document each figure’s metamorphosis with paint, charcoal, pastel, and water, capturing the tension between animate and inanimate. McClure’s titles in this body of work draw on mythology, literature, and art history, situating these figures within the broader cultural context and encouraging the viewer to reflect more deeply on the work.
Cathy McClure first gained recognition with Carnival of Life, a Zoetrope that combined theatrical elements, shadow play, and animation, earning her the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Memorial Award the same year she completed her MFA. Since then, she has exhibited widely, including a solo presentation at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and participated in residencies at Pilchuck Glass School, Les Frigos Paris, iolair, and the McColl Center for the Arts. McClure has completed major public commissions, most recently A Place in the Woods for the Seattle Convention Center Summit in 2023, where she also served as Artist Consultant from 2016 to 2024. Her work is held in significant collections, including the White House, the Pace Collection, and the CCS Bard Collection, with recent acquisitions by Public Art at SEA Airport. Additional solo exhibitions include the Milton Hershey Museum, Neuhoff/Edelman, Moss, and Art Basel Miami.
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About
Cathy McClure - view profile
Cathy McClure is an anti-disciplinarian, choosing to work with materials and techniques in radically unconventional ways. With a strong background in metal design and propelled by a boundless curiosity, she explores materials, spaces, and processes that push the boundaries of what art can be. McClure’s enthusiastic approach toward inventive methodologies raises questions about what is considered valuable.
Her sculptures and installations investigate the discrepancy between past perceptions of an imagined utopic techno-future and the future we now inhabit. Often using toys as metaphors, McClure’s works highlight our societal penchant for instant gratification, over-production, and habitually excessive consumption, while simultaneously drawing upon a collective nostalgia for a past we’ve enthusiastically discarded.