From November 30, 2017 through January 13, 2018, Seattle’s
Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) is excited to present Cathy McClure, a multi-media artist with a background in metal design who typically works in sterling silver, copper, bronze, and steel. Additionally, she has a preoccupation with engineering, mechanical toys and the discrepancy between America’s Dream of our techno-future and that imagined future in which we now exist.

Her latest body of work, highlighted at CoCA, involves the deconstruction and reinvention of cacophonous rejects. “Hands wielding scissors, I massacre discarded motor-driven robotic plush toys, eviscerating them through a Geppetto-like taxidermy until I get down into the guts… Skinning my “Bots” to the bone, all that remains are their various articulated plastic limbs and bodily armature, which contains the preserved mechanisms that gave these once-cuddly Elmos, elephants, Mickeys and monkeys their life-like movement and sound.” -Cathy McClure In times past, the future was an unfamiliar and magical place filled with technology. The Digital Kids generation’s post-toy life leans more toward apathy and  bewilderment while immersed in their devices substituting the jubilance and exhilaration found in real time play. While Toys R Us files for bankruptcy* and Super Mario takes over the screens of millions of children this holiday season, we are left surrounded
by a grossly abundant supply of the dispossessed and forgotten. McClure’s uniquely engineered and gold-leafed bots have led her to a place where the discarded are discovered then reinvented amidst her clever curiosity and sheer joy for the more complex, perhaps darker? … and mischievous side of techno play.

McClure received the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Award and received her MFA from the University of Washington in 1997. She has had solo shows at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and
the Bellevue Arts Museum and has exhibited widely, including the Henry Art Gallery, the Milton Hershey School Museum, and Art Miami Basel. She is currently represented by Edelman Arts and Moss in New York. She lives in West Seattle with her husband and lots of various parts and pieces of mechanical toys acquired at local thrift stores. *https://www.toysrusinc.com/press/toysrus-inc- commences-court- supervised-processes- to-implement- financial-restructuring Join us for the opening reception during Pioneer Square Artwalk on Thursday, December 7 from 6-9pm. All events at CoCA in Pioneer Square: 114 Third Avenue South, Seattle, 98104