Gretchen Hasse headshot

Gretchen Hasse

Visual Artist, Filmmaker, Curator
2021 Make a Wave
Visual Arts

Gretchen is a Chicago-based storyteller working in comics, video, animation, murals, and installation. She co-founded Agitator ArtistCollective in 2017, and since then curation has also been a crucial part of her practice.

Gretchen’s documentary videos for social justice campaigns have educated policy makers, informed the general public, and inspired new activists. Her narrative videos have screened nationally and internationally. In 2021, she published the first two volumes of Agitator Comics!, an open-theme compilation. Volume 3 debuts in October 2022.

Gretchen received her MFA in Film, Video and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the summer of 2022 she completed a two month residency at Buinho Fab Lab in Messejana, Portugal, where she focused on fabrication and robotics. She is the recipient of a 2021 Make A Wave nomination-based grant from 3Arts in Chicago; a 2022 VIDA: Women in Literary Arts Fellowship for Writing Residency at Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee; and a 2022 Esteemed Artist Grant from the City of Chicago. She teaches drawing and writing at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.

Featured Artworks

  •  Gretchen Hasse artwork Set piece for The Thing With Wings, a work in progress created with Chicago Puppet Lab, 2023
  •  Gretchen Hasse artwork Everything Hase Changed: Life Altering Health Care Experiences in 2st Century USA Show curated for Agitator Artist Collective, September 2019
  •  Gretchen Hasse artwork
  •  Gretchen Hasse artwork Cover for Behind God's Back Chapter 3 of ongoing graphic novel freaks' Progress, 2023
  •  Gretchen Hasse artwork Still from Music Video, Mojo Hobo For the Chicago punk band Silver Abuse, 2014
  •  Gretchen Hasse artwork The Air We Breathe: Petcoke Pollution in South East Chicago Created with Rising Tide Chicago, 2015

Gretchen Hasse has crowd-funded a project with 3AP

  • Waking Giants

    • $5,000 raised of $5,000 goal
    • 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
      • 3Arts matched
      • 100% funded
      • 0% to go

    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