Gretchen Bennett

Gretchen Bennett received her MFA from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. She has recently exhibited her work at the Bronx Museum, PS122 Gallery, Smack Mellon Studios in NYC, and at SOIL Art Gallery in Seattle (Topography of Home). She was recently awarded residencies at Centrum and the Yaddo Foundation and previously received a Fulbright Award to study in Prague as well as a Pratt Fine Arts Center residency among other awards. Assembled with stickers collected from city kiosks and buildings, many of Gretchen’s wall drawings and installations simulate branch networks and other natural formations. Gretchen’s work was chosen to be in the King County Public Art Collection for their portable arts collection.

Gretchen received 2009 GAP Award funding to offset the production costs of a video series, including sound recording, editing, and final presentation. These new video pieces demonstrate a strong commitment to a new medium for the artist in which she explores parallel themes to those in her recent drawing series examining the origins of the members of the rock band Nirvana and the landscape that shaped them.

Gretchen received 2005 GAP Award funding to help defray the costs of design and production for a large series of adhesive-backed sticker editions. Made from drawings of the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, she has placed these stickers at eye level in Brooklyn, her former home. She is then planning to bring images from the East Coast back to the Seattle-Portland area in the form of stickers.