In this Napping Wizard Session, I met up with Seattle-based artist Gretchen Frances Bennett in Bratislava Slovakia on 12 June 2023. In 2021-2022 she completed a Fulbright Core Scholar research grant to retrace a family trip she made to the city in the 1970s. Time travel, memory, family archives, we circle a literary work she has in progress that stretches the then and now of impressions she has from various trips to a Central Europe that changed so much between 1972 and 2023.
As this conversation demonstrates, Gretchen’s work explores the soup of recounted personal histories, the fluidity of memory, and the construction of new literary, visual, and audio stories that imagine themselves in the openings between historical facts and personal memories.
In NYC, Gretchen has participated in artist-in-residence programs on Governors Island with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Bronx Museum of Art and has created a public program with the Drawing Center. The Frye Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum, among many others, have hosted exhibitions of her work over the years. Her writing has appeared in Cold Cube Press for Veronica Project Space, Seattle, WA; in Earth Saga Press, Letters from Earth, Glasgow, United Kingdom; and in La Norda Specialo, Seattle, WA. She has also been an adjunct faculty member at Seattle University, Department of Art, Art History, and Design for many years. More info can be found here: https://www.gretchenbennett.com/
In the podcast I promise to link to a playlist. This is Gretchen’s soundtrack and hallucinogenic audio mood board of the then-communist Czechoslovakia she visited in 1972-73. All the songs we reference can be found here. Listen along, or follow the podcast with this nostalgic soundtrack.
Gretchen’s Spotify Playlist: 72 / 73
If Loving You is Wrong, I Don’t Want to be Right, LUTHER INGRAM
Baby, Baby, I’m Hooked on You, MAC DAVIS
Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone, BILL WITHERS
You’re so Vain, CARLY SIMON
Lean On Me, BILL WITHERS
Me and Mrs. Jones, BILLY PAUL
THE WEST WING, The Lame Duck Congress, Season 2.6, Aaron Sorkin and John Wells, ©Warner Bros.
LOONEY TUNES, Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, (Cross This Line) Chuck Jones and Friz Feleng, ©Warner Bros.
FLIPPER, Ivan Tors Films in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television
FINNEGANS WAKE read by Patrick Horgan, 1985, Book II, Episode I
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
