Claudia Cave: Interiors and Interiority
August 28 – December 4, 2021
Study Gallery and Print Study Center
Corvallis, Oregon artist Claudia Cave (American, born 1951) grew up in Salem and earned art degrees at Western Oregon University and the University of Idaho. Her drawings and paintings range widely in subject matter, from spiky female figures to zooming canines and occasional cats to smoothly excavated landscape forms. Organized by guest curator Roger Hull, the exhibition emphasizes Cave’s penchant for interiors and isolated rooms alive with compulsively rendered detail and fantasy, or cross-sections of entire houses, their spaces (and inhabitants) opened up for all to see.
Claudia Cave, Light House, 2008, gouache and watercolor on paper, 34 x 41. inches, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Maribeth Collins Art Acquisition Fund, 2008.068. Photo: Aaron Johanson.
Hull says, “Cave’s focus on interiors can lead her further inward, to the realm of interiority—the psychic zone of thoughts, dreams, ennui, and sometimes apprehension. In Cave’s work, we can think of Surrealism, German Expressionism and a variety of Pacific Northwest artists, … but her art is decisively, hilariously, and at times disconcertingly her own.”
Growing up in Salem, Cave found great and lasting inspiration through her mother’s subscription to the Architectural Digest magazine and her paternal grandmother’s fascinating and “wacky” house in Southeast Salem.
Cave says that her works “tell a story and have to do with my personal experience growing up. I use my experiences as a starting point to illustrate an idea or message. It becomes less about me and more about us. The collective us.”
Claudia Cave holds degrees from Western Oregon University and the University of Idaho. She has exhibited her work widely in solo and group exhibitions and is represented in numerous private collections in the Northwest and beyond.
Claudia Cave and her drawing Sharing the Wealth, Moscow, Idaho, 1981. Photo: Kent Summer.
Financial Support
This exhibition and the accompanying brochure by Roger Hull have been supported in part by funds from the HFMA Exhibition Fund; by advertising support from The Oregonian/Oregon Live; and by general operating support grants from the City of Salem's Transient Occupancy Tax funds and the Oregon Arts Commission.
