How To Make It In The Art World

Gretchen Andrew's Journey to The Whitney

It’s official. The Whitney Museum of American Art has acquired two of my Facetune Portraits.

When Christiane Paul, the museum's Curator of Digital Art, put the work forward, the acquisition committee “enthusiastically and unanimously voted to acquire.”

Those are words I’ve been working toward for 12 years. It’s a moment that feels both sudden and a lifetime in the making.

But let me rewind. How did we get here?

From the Woods of New Hampshire to a Google Cubicle

I grew up mostly in New Hampshire, where my biggest joy was running around in the woods. That love for running led to a track and cross country scholarship to Boston College. I was acutely aware that I’d need a good job after graduation, so I studied Information Systems—a subject I genuinely came to love.

When I graduated in 2010, I landed the job: Google. This was back when they still made you go through 16 interviews. They flew me out to Mountain View twice during my senior year. I had made it.

Except, I was really unhappy.

I was seeing tech used to manipulate our attention and sell us stuff we don't need, mostly controlled by men who were both subtly and overtly harassing me. But deep down, I still believed in the power of technology for positive personal transformation. So I posed my quitting Google as a challenge to technology itself: Can it transform me into an artist?

The stakes were high. On my last day of work, my father called to explicitly remind me that if this didn't work out, the family wouldn't have any resources to support me... which I totally already knew.

The experiment began. Could the internet make me into an artist? Could I hack myself into the art world?

No Skills, No Connections, No Problem

I started with no formal art skills, no connections, $5,000 in savings, and a membership to a 24-Hour Fitness where I showered and brushed my teeth each night. Then I’d return to my illegally occupied art studio, where my only appliance was a rice cooker.

My education was a DIY curriculum of the internet:

• YouTube videos on how to draw hands, paint clouds, and stretch a canvas.

• Countless articles on how to write an artist statement.

• Stanford's free "Practice-Based Research" course online.

• A modern art course from MoMA online.

I made a lot of very bad art. I drove for an early Uber competitor to make money (I had a 2-star rating).

I tried to get into the studio of any artist who would have me. In 2014, I got the opening of a lifetime. A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend had exhibited with the British figurative painter Billy Childish. I secured an invitation to his studio. When he asked to see my portfolio, he flipped through it and just said, “This is really bad.”

To which I replied, “I know.”

It’s always funny to me that the art world considers me "self-taught." I graduated with honors from a top liberal arts school, had the entire internet at my disposal, and learned life drawing and classical painting from a master’s studio. I guess to the art world, not going to a small set of approved art schools means you taught yourself.

Finding My Voice: From Rejection to Recognition

While learning classical techniques from Billy, I continued to experiment with technology. It wasn’t until I connected with Nimrod Vardi and his organization Arebyte that I truly began to bridge my two practices.

In 2018, I published a peer-reviewed academic paper with the Electronic Visualization in the Arts conference, which later became the basis for a book published with the V&A called Search Engine Art.

Then came the Frieze Art Fair hack in 2019. The day before the fair, I got two major rejections. An art dealer who had promised a $1,000 investment to cover printing costs backed out. On the same day, Artsy pulled out of an exclusive agreement to cover the story.

It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. When the fair opened the next morning, my search engine performance dominated the press, with articles in the LA Times, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Swedish Radio, and dozens of others. The rejections had set me free.

Around this time, the legendary artist Penny Slinger moved in next to my studio. She became the witchy, feminine mentor I needed to break free from my need to be taken seriously. Instead, I started to dare people not to take me seriously. My work manipulated Google Search Results for the 2020 presidential election, but it looked as innocuous as I did... pink, effeminate, flowery. I dare you.

The related Vision Boards exhibited in California, London, Austria, Germany, and Dubai, leading to two museum acquisitions and a major 3-room, 8-month exhibition at the Francisco Carolinum Linz, which printed my first museum catalog.

I sent one of those catalogs to Christiane Paul at The Whitney.

The Final Push

I then took almost three years, mostly in the woods of Utah, to develop my next big idea: Facetune Portraits.

After finally nailing the technical and conceptual process with the help of Matr Labs, I hosted more than 100 online studio visits. Those conversations led to an incredible series of opportunities to share the work around the world:

• With Postmasters X Transfer Gallery in NYC

• Berlin Art Week

• In Beijing with PANE Projects

• At Paris Photo with C/O Berlin

• At The Tate Modern

• At Untitled Miami with Gazelli Art House

• In Korea at The NFT Biennial

• At Gray Area in San Francisco

• At Hope&Glory in London

• At Expo Chicago with VIGO Gallery

• At Heft Gallery in NYC

And now, here we are. In The Whitney’s permanent collection.

The Real Work

There are so many more stories. Like the time I put my entire studio in a U-Haul and drove it across London just to get a studio visit with a dealer who wouldn't come to my neighborhood.

Kim Gordon says that people will pay to watch you believe in yourself. I’ve always taken that as part of the job of an artist.

There were doubters and haters and harassment and betrayals—stories I no longer tell myself.

And there were major losses. In the 12 years between deciding to become an artist and this moment, I lost my mother, my sister, and my best friend. All three were people I had always imagined would be here with me to celebrate a moment like this.

Through it all, I’ve learned that my biggest art project will always be my reality—the world that I invent for myself to live in and keep making work in.

I’m continuing to push the boundaries of this process, this technology, and this concept. What’s next?

Just know I didn't come this far to only come this far.

I am so glad you are joining me on this journey. Thank you for being a part of it.

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