Clare Graham sees art where others see junk

It’s something of a meta twist: an artist’s gallery, re-created within a museum and serving as the central art piece of the gallery. But that’s in line with much of artist Clare Graham’s work.

The 65-year-old obsessive collector and found-object artist stockpiles massive quantities of everyday items — bottle caps and buttons, dominoes and Scrabble tiles — in his Highland Park studio. Growing up poor in Atikokan, Canada, Graham learned the art of frugality. Nothing was worth wasting. Now the artist turns his arsenal of junk into large-scale sculptures, dreamy and ornate.

For his first solo museum exhibition, the Craft & Folk Art Museum has re-created Graham’s 7,000-square-foot York Boulevard studio, MorYork, which is teeming with decorative furniture and installations.

“There’s this sense of ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ or that you’ve walked into Ali Baba’s cave,” museum director Suzanne Isken said. “Everywhere you look there’s stuff, all sort of ancient-looking and fascinating.”

Over years, Graham purchased hundreds of teddy bears from thrift stores, most for 25 cents each; he’s shrink-wrapped groupings of them, creating plush, modular units that he used to build modernist-looking sculptures featured in the exhibit.

Also on view: a chaise lounge crafted from metal soda can pop-tops and chandeliers made of translucent red and corral buttons. The latter resemble hanging sea plants. And inside an enormous, long-legged cabinet decorated on the outside with Scrabble tiles? A hologram of Graham’s head.

“He used to work at Disneyland. He was a set decorator, so it’s dramatic,” Isken said. “Different narratives are unfolding all over the room.”

deborah.vankin@latimes.com

Twitter: @debvankin