Gretchen Hasse
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 Artist 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 in Chicago. 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 Comics! Volume 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.
Dahlia the Dinosaur and Wendy Madrigal in The Thing with Wings, Chopin Theater, 2023
Photo by Loren Toney
Featured Artworks
With Their Very Bones
Photo by Danny Smitherman, EEI Media
With Their Very Bones is Chapter Two of The Dinosaur Opera. It is a vaudeville-inspired hand puppet performance that addresses humanity’s continued dependence on fossil fuels. Work in Progress Premiered at Halloween Communion: a Circus Open Stage, presented by Aloft Circus Arts in Chicago, IL, USA; October 2024. Writer / Director / Puppet Fabricator / Solo Performer: Gretchen Hasse
This Body
Section from a 3 page comic exploring the absurdity of growing up broken, and the different but equally intense absurdity of becoming somewhat fixed.
Fresh and Unfettered
Cover image for Freaks' Progress, ongoing graphic novel
Resilience
Mural Team: Jason Schroeder, Dalia Carrillo, Cesar Moyorido
2017 Mile of Murals Selection
Landscape
Kinetic installation made from Roof Tile, LED lights, 3D Printed Windmills Powered by Arduino. Part of a 2022 residency at Buinho Fablab in Messejana, Portugal.
Everything Has Changed: Life Altering Healthcare Experiences in 21st Century USA
2019 Exhibition Curated for Agitator Artist Collective
Gretchen Hasse has crowd-funded a project with 3AP
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- $5,000 raised of $5,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
Waking Giants is a yearlong project that will manifest in a larger than life, motion sensitive, animatronic figurative sculpture. It will involve a six-month learning period in Chicago, a two-month residency in Portugal, and a four-month period dedicated to planning …
Read more about Waking Giants