Gretchen Marie Schaefer

Drawings of the moon.

Drawing of petrified wood.

A series of graphite drawings of lunar rocks and meteorites

Inclined Fold from Above

Aftereffect: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Painting
Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver
Curated by Elissa Auther

I taught myself how to fly a drone for this performance. Behind sunglasses and fake plants, I hid in a corner (though intentionally not very well) and piloted a small drone, hovering it in the center of the Presidential Suite of Castle Marne, a historic bed and breakfast. An attendant, dressed and accessorized like a Secret Service agent, kept viewers out of the flight path and, very practically, changed the batteries of the drone as they drained over the two-day durational performance. When entering the suite, viewers were confronted by the “eye” of the drone’s camera and multiple reflections from my and the attendant’s sunglasses and three mirrors across from the entry. Distracted by being so watched in an otherwise intimate, private space, paired with the ominous buzz of the drone and intimidating presence of the attendant, many viewers actually did fail to see me. So disoriented by what they saw, some even suspended logic, positing that the stoic attendant was flying the drone telepathically.

Jokes of Nature
RedLine
Curated by Donald Fodness and Geoffrey Shamos
September 4, 2015 - October 25, 2015

Artist Statement
This installation is a glimpse into my studio practice and my handling of objects. My sculptures and drawings are made up of materials that were gifted, found, or are remnants from past artworks. Sometimes the materials used to make the work are then used as materials in the work itself (the plastic drop cloths used to paint the other materials, for example). By not treating the constituent parts as precious I am able to manipulate and transform objects in multiple iterations and without hindrance. In the making of these new things and the handling of the materials I intuitively consider the relationship between each object.

Using materials from past projects reconfigured over and over again reinforces a conversation about impermanence, interrelationship, and cycle as seen in nature. I am especially thoughtful of disturbing yet naturally-occurring events or organic states—death being a prime and reoccurring subject.

These objects are at times unidentifiable but strangely familiar. In this vibrating, tenuous space, this collection of objects oscillate between the macro and micro, the internal and external, the organic and synthetic, life and death, the grotesque and beautiful. 

Curatorial Statement
Jokes of Nature:  Playfulness and Monstrosity in Contemporary Grotesque “There are few grotesques so utterly playful as to be overcast with no shade of fearfulness, and few so fearful as absolutely to exclude all ideas of jest.” -John Ruskin, Stones of Venice (1853) “Laughter caused by the grotesque has about it something profound, primitive, axiomatic, which is much closer to the innocent life and to absolute joy than is the laughter caused by the comic in man’s behavior.” -Baudelaire, “On the Essence of Laughter” (1855) For Early Modern natural historians, the “jokes of nature” were aspects of the natural  world that defied explanation or categorization, including strange and exotic animals, rare stones and minerals, plants from the New World, and creatures born with  monstrous deformities. These demonstrations of Nature’s playfulness were collected and assembled in Cabinets of Curiosity, where they induced feelings of wonderment, confusion, and uneasiness. Perverse and playful, Nature offers a model for artistic creation that stretches the boundaries of convention, inviting both pleasure and disgust. The Grotesque inverts, subverts, and perverts the standard order of being. It celebrates a world turned upside-down where the reconfiguration of familiar forms evokes both terror and laugher simultaneously. Horace compared Grotesque imagery to a “sick man’s dreams,” where seemingly contradictory features exist in suspension and monstrous hybrids emerge from the depths of the subconscious. Although seemingly marginal, the Grotesque resists easy dismissal and threatens to subsume the center as a persistent, gnawing fascination. As confrontational as it is seductive, the Grotesque leads to a psychic estrangement filled with horror and wonder as new realities arise from familiar forms that are recombined, transformed, and mutated in a process of unbridled metamorphosis. By stripping away the confinements of established reality, the Grotesque allows for the unfettered play of the imagination. As an aesthetic category, the Grotesque includes aspects of the diabolical, scatological, pornographic, dreamlike, carnivalesque, uncanny, and caricatured. Such features have been adopted and exploited by a wide variety of contemporary artists interested in the fruitful juxtaposition of the comic and the marvelous, the natural and the artificial, the attractive and the repellant, the refined and the low-brow. By sanctioning combinations of seemingly contradictory binaries, the Grotesque promotes artistic play that generates new realities and new states of being. The contemporary Grotesque, like all the grotesques that have come before, elicits diabolical laughter as it reveals essential truths about human nature that are at once comical and profound, playful and monstrous.  

Artist Statement
These days when I walk into my studio I find things waiting for me—a carefully folded stack of white fabric, a plastic bag stuffed with bubble wrap, an old Lord and Taylor box labeled “fur” packed with mink scarfs, a complete deer spine in a big, blue Ikea bag…. I call these “studio gifts.”

The materials that comprise this show are these studio gifts, objects I find, bits and clippings left over from past artworks, the building itself, and even the plastic used to paint the other materials. By not treating the constituent parts as precious I am able to manipulate and transform objects in multiple iterations and without hindrance. In the making of these new things and the handling of the materials I intuitively consider the relationship between each object.

Using materials from past projects reconfigured over and over again reinforces a conversation about impermanence, interrelationship, and cycle as seen in nature. I am especially studious of disturbing yet naturally-occurring events or organic states—death being a prime and reoccurring subject.

This installation exists in the humming, tenuous space I often explore. Oscillating between the macro and micro, the internal and external, the organic and synthetic, life and death, the grotesque and beautiful. This unsettled area is a constantly moving target that I continuously set up and aim for in my work.

Curatorial Statement
The Humming of Objects invites the viewer to consider the nature of objects and their relationships to each other and to humans. Each relationship is unique, a concept exemplified in the artist's handling of the materials. In this installation we consider cycles in nature and the tension in between one moment and place of existence and the next. This tension within the liminal margin can be likened to that of the tension between talking and singing … the humming space.

All work in the main gallery is the result of found and donated objects that have been manipulated, reshaped, melted, cut, unstuffed, bent, and painted in the reformation of a life anew. Additionally, all works in this installation are made from materials connected to people the artist knows, to experiences, and to past artworks. They include: bubble wrap, plastic, foam, wood, bone, stone, paint, fabric, string, and hair. Moving away from their original form, time, and place, these objects become new, and it is only upon close inspection that one might discover their depth and their many parts.

Materials

- plastic used as drop cloth to paint materials used in artworks
- bubble wrap from studio mate used to wrap paintings
- rock from studio mate’s installation
- a church that became a temple that became an art studio that became an art gallery
- rock found by studio mate outside of studio
- branches from a dying Chinese Elm in the artist’s yard
- foam from a sculpture made by the artist in 2009 for a resident artist exhibition at RedLine
- string from installation at First Draft, an exhibition at the Biennial of the Americas in 2013
- fabric scraps from a studio mate
- canvas scraps trimmed from studio mate’s stretched canvases
- part of pig skull from a pig roast at a friend’s wedding reception
- plastic portion cups from studio mate at RedLine given when he moved to go to grad school, melted with a propane torch
- rabbit skin bought at the ARC by studio mate for the artist
- mink scarf that once belonged to studio mate’s grandmother
- stuffing from mink scarf
- packaging material from a studio mate
- graphite drawing on mylar
- brass nails
- drywall screws
- Gorilla Glue
- latex paint
- spray paint
- light
- fur tuft from unknown animal, once attached to a stick, in a box of items given to the artist by a woman whose dogs the artist walks periodically
- piece of a cane cholla cactus picked up on a hike with friends in Albuquerque, New Mexico
- shell found on Topsail Beach, North Carolina by a friend on family vacation
- bones from a pig skull from a pig roast at a friend’s wedding reception
- wish bone given to the artist by a studio mate
- nylon string thrown away from an exhibition titled From the Ground Up: Design Here + Now, found in the dumpster behind 516 Arts in Albuquerque, NM while visiting friends
- lamp shade removed from wire frame by studio mate so frame could be used in an installation for a RedLine Gala 2015 table
- wood found on a hike on Jefferson Hill, Park County, Colorado

Donated Objects
1970’s Argentinian coat made before the Guerra Sucia from two hides of two cows bought by a North American journalist and later given to Lanny DeVuono.

Angel boy with puppy figurine given to Joel Swanson by his mother when his dog “Smacky” died.

Rebecca Vaughan’s father’s hair, cut from his head by Rebecca the day after he was pronounced brain dead and the day before his body’s organs were removed for donation.

A mourning wreath made by Laura Shill from flowers, butterflies, and human hair for Laura’s grandmother, Beverly Ball, after Mrs. Ball’s death in May of 2011. 

Caster wheel from the base of a wall built by Cortney Lane Stell’s father and husband for the exhibition, First Draft, which was part of the 2013 Biennial of the Americas.

Painted ceramic turtle bought by Conor King as a child, kept over the years, and used in an experimental photography project.

Small yellow shoes bought in Chinatown in New York City and given to Alicia Ordal by a past lover.

Painting on stretched canvas by Ian Fisher from his undergraduate painting class with Jerry Kumkel in 2004.

Super Techno M5064 watch that Kevin Raleigh is not supposed to have, given to him by a man who may have been born in Laredo, Texas, but may not have been.

Photography by Wes Magyar

Attract/Retract/Attract, 2014
Vertigo Art Space
Three person exhibition with Theresa Clowes and Sarah Wallace Scott.