Bliss101Radio with Gretchen Baer

For this weeks guest, Gretchen Baer, art is everywhere. From in the gallery, theatrical & musical productions, to what she drives, where she lives &, even what she sails, everything becomes the canvas for her own fantastical mythology. Trained as a painter at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, she challenged traditional technique with the use of found objects and applied textures. While secretly living in the school's massive cellar system, Gretchen & her friends transformed their environment into a mythical underground kingdom. Four years later she emerged with a BFA & a bad glitter habit. After seeing Harrod Blank's movie "Wild Wheels" Gretchen plunged into the world of art cars. Creating "The Funk Ambulance", "The Great Fortune-Telling Lion" & the famous "Hillcar", these publicly accessible mobile sculptures became a refreshing progression for Gretchen's obsession with expression. Having grown up on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, the natural next step was to move her art into the water. While traveling aboard her first art boat, Gretchen met the Floating Neutrinos. In association with this eccentric family of raft builders & adventurers (best known from the documentary "Random Lunacy"), she & her partner build "Dragonfly's Banquet". For two years this thirty-two foot dragon raft became her floating home in the waters off Massachusetts and New York. In addition to creating these public art spectacles, Gretchen has continued to produce paintings for galleries & private collections. She has shown in New York City, Martha's Vineyard, Boston, Tucson & Bisbee, AZ. Her large commissioned pieces hang in private homes in Palm Beach, Key West, & New York. Gretchen now lives & paints in Bisbee, AZ. http://paintressgretchen.blogspot.com/