Seattle artist Cathy McClure reveals newest installation at Bellevue Arts Museum

Cathy McClure: Midway on view at BAM May 26, 2011 - January 22, 2012

Bellevue, WA – This spring, Seattle artist Cathy McClure is transforming BAM's Klorfine Family Gallery into her newest and largest installation to date. Complete with music, whirling lights, futuristic mechanized toys, a buzzing 10' ferris wheel and working carousel, Midway references the traveling carnivals of McClure's youth – a disappearing yet magical piece of Americana, mirrored through the fading memories of childhood.

Combining zoetropic elements with her signature 'bots' and incorporating such pop icons as Elmo and Mickey Mouse – unrecognizably stripped of their commercial identities – the artist opens up a dialogue about issues of consumerism, value, obsolescence and the American dream. "My zoetropic works consist of a cast of solid inflexible characters engaged in repetitive motions, which conjure dreamy cinematic operations and allude to a modern life characterized by escapism, frenzy and consumption," McClure explains.

"Midway evokes a fusion of adult and childhood fantasy with somber undertones as though the artist's creatures have run too long unchecked," says Curator Nora Atkinson. "It speaks of the coming and going of people/fads/phases, of displacement and discontentedness in the modern world, and of being lost in between." Though the toys cannot help but amuse, the work is nonetheless all the more poignant in a time that has seen a dramatic shift from rampant consumerism and waste into deep recession.

Cathy McClure: Midway will be on view at Bellevue Arts Museum from May 26, 2011 through January 22, 2012. It is the artist's first showing in the Northwest in five years, marking a return to the local stage.

About Cathy McClure:

A metalsmith by trade, McClure predominantly works in sterling silver, bronze and steel, but has always been fascinated by other disciplines, and often includes multimedia components in her work. A constant presence in McClure's artwork has been her preoccupation with mechanical toys and the discrepancy between the perception of an imagined techno-future and that future that we now inhabit, juxtaposed with humor and charm in her elaborate installations. The artist received her BFA from Texas Technological University in 1995 and her MFA from the University of Washington in 1997, studying under Mary Lee Hu. She has exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Milton Hershey School Museum and Art Miami Basel. She currently resides in Seattle, WA.

This exhibition is organized by Bellevue Arts Museum, curated by Nora Atkinson.