About

Photo circa 1985, by my mom

Gretchen is a visually-based storyteller working in comics, murals, puppetry, and curation. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2017, her design was chosen for Rogers Park’s Mile of Murals. That same year she co-founded Agitator Artists’ Collective, where her notable curation includes 2019’s Everything Has Changed: Life Altering Medical Experiences in 21st Century USA. Her 2020 book-based exhibition, And Then: Stories About What Happens Next, is an invited contribution to Documenting Contemporary Social Life Shaped by the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Justice Movements, at the Field Museum. She was Visual Gallery Curatorial Resident at Elastic Arts from 2021 - 2022. In 2024 she mounted Comics on the Radio, an accessible, live radio play interpretation of Agitator ComicsVolume 4. In 2025, she co-curated Narratives of Flesh, mounted at The International Museum of Surgical Science, with fellow 3Arts awardee Genevieve Ramos.

In summer 2022, Gretchen completed a residency at Buinho FabLab in Portugal, where she focused on installation and robotics. In 2023 she was a comics artist residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts; and later that year she debuted The Thing With Wings, created while in residence at the Puppet Lab program of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.

Gretchen has received a 2021 3Arts Make A Wave grant; a 2022 VIDA: Women in Literary Arts Fellowship for Writing Residency at SAFTA in Knoxville; and a 2022 Esteemed Artist Grant from Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She teaches art and writing at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.