How Leaving Google and Hacking the Art World Led to The Whitney - Gretchen Andrew

Gretchen Andrew left Google with just $5,000, no art degree, and no clear roadmap. Years later, her work, Facetune Portraits, now lives inside the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In this episode of Why I Left, Gretchen shares how she walked away from one of the most prestigious jobs in tech, taught herself painting online, and pioneered “Search Engine Art” by manipulating digital systems as artistic expression. Along the way, she confronted rejection, grief, gatekeeping, and the pressure of building an identity completely outside traditional institutions.

This conversation is about far more than art.

It’s about reinvention, self-belief, visibility, and the courage to pursue something that feels impossible before anyone else validates it. If you’ve ever questioned the path you’re on or wondered whether it’s too late to rebuild your life around what actually matters to you, this episode is for you.

Enjoy!

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Website: https://www.gretchenandrew.com/
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gretchenandrew/

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Transcript

Gretchen Andrew 0:44

And what it really felt to me is like I had hacked into this thing. And I had found a door into the supposedly very closed, very insular art world that could not have been more me. I started watching YouTube videos and doing Stanford Online and MoMA online. I did not know anybody in the art world. There was no reason to believe that this is something I could do other than that technology supposedly could do things like that. And that's what I believed in. It means that these artworks are now part of art history. They're being preserved by the Whitney Museum in perpetuity forever. And the seriousness of that existing with artists like Edward Hopper and Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, that's the collection that they they now live in. I've made this huge career accomplishment. And now I get to enjoy the journey from here even more because I'm so certain that this is this lifetime achievement has been reached now.

Brian Aquart 1:38

Welcome to Why I Left, a podcast exploring life-changing career moves. I'm your host, Brian Aquart. Join me as I chronicle real stories from real people about the bold decisions that transform their careers and lives. Let's dive in. Hello, and thanks for tuning in to this episode of Why I Left. Imagine walking away from Google with just $5,000 in your pocket, no art degree, and no plan except to bet on yourself. Gretchen Andrew did exactly that. She turned YouTube tutorials, search results, and sheer persistence into a career breakthrough that landed her work in the Whitney Museum's permanent collection. Her story is part resilience, part rebellion, and all about rewriting the rules. Let's go check it out. All right, welcome back. So our guest today is Gretchen Andrew, a visionary artist known for inventing search engine art, manipulating digital systems to insert her voice into global art conversations. After leaving Google, disillusioned with how tech was being used, she set out to transform herself into an artist, teaching herself painting online, hustling her way into studios, and merging classical technique with technological subversion. Her work has been exhibited worldwide from London to Beijing to New York, culminating in the Whitney Museum acquiring her Facetune portraits earlier this year. Gretchen's journey proves that belief, creativity, and persistence can open doors where none exists. So, Gretchen, welcome to Why I Left. How are you doing?

Gretchen Andrew 3:18

Great. Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Aquart 3:20

Absolutely. Well, I'm glad I'm glad uh your team reached out and you know, they pitched me when they did. I was just so fascinated to learn about your story and your upbringing and all of this art. And I think this creative aspect that you bring to the show is just something I'm really excited to dig into. So would love to just have the audience learn a little bit more about you. And so you you grew up in New Hampshire, you studied information systems at Boston College, and you even ran track. So a lot going on there. How can you share a little bit about that foundation and really what shaped your early worldview?

Gretchen Andrew 3:54

Yeah. So I think I grew up, and especially getting into college and getting a scholarship to run track at Boston College. I felt both the opportunity and then also a lot of pressure to be responsible and to get a very good job, study something practical. I very much believe in the liberal arts education, but I also thought of it as a luxury. And so within that liberal arts education, I decided I was going to study undergrad business and fell in love with information systems. I I picked it to be practical, but I also really loved it. It's basically the looking at how technology can help create competitive competitive advantage and a little bit of business, a little bit of programming. So even though I picked it to be practical, knowing that when I left, I was going to be an adult and going to be on my own, that it was still something that I was really drawn to as far as technology and transformation.

Brian Aquart 4:53

That's a strong background. You eventually end up joining Google when it still carried that elite aura. So how did the prestige of that moment shape even the risk of eventually leaving?

Gretchen Andrew 5:06

Yeah. I mean, it was the job, right? This was just past through just after 2008, and very few people were hiring. There were no banking jobs, and bankers were starting to go out to Silicon Valley because it was relatively healthy compared to Wall Street. And the housing market had just collapsed, and I got what was for my degree, the job to get. Like you said, it had still had a lot of prestige at the time. I went through 13 different interviews. They flew me out to San Francisco twice during my senior year to interview, you know, just silly stuff that no company would would do anymore. And I think feeling that similar to when I got the scholarship to BC, feeling that pressure and also that opportunity that this is this is supposed to be really good. And I am very lucky to be here.

Brian Aquart 5:59

And so ultimately, you know, you end up transitioning out. And so what was what was the moment you knew that you actually had to leave Google?

Gretchen Andrew 6:09

Well, I I was there and so much believed in technology as a tool of transformation. I was seeing it mainly used to manipulate our attention, sell us things we don't need. I also felt significantly less empowered in that job than I thought I would. I was totally drinking the Kool-Aid, the early uh early employee. Not I wasn't, I obviously wasn't an early employee at Google. It was early in my career, and I believed everything they said about, you know, taking risks and not having a hierarchy. And that's not how I found it to be. But on top of all of that, I just remember sitting at my desk and honestly just crying. Just like, this is supposed to be so good. I'm very unhappy here. And I did have a mentor of mine, because I had worked at Intuit before, came and had lunch with me at Google and said something like, Oh, you millennials, you're all so angsty, you snowflakes, whatever. You know, you'll when you get to be my age, like you'll realize that you just have to deal with these systems and do your time. And I was like, hell no, that is not. Because I had I actually had been told this when I when I went to college as well, that, oh, like you're growing up in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, you're smart for Bow, New Hampshire. But when you get to college, you realize you're not one of the smartest people in the classroom anymore. And like be ready for that transition. And so I felt like my whole life people have been preparing me to be overwhelmed and to not feel confident and competent. And it just hadn't been my experience in either case. So I think that conversation was really this inflection point where it's like, okay, what if I do, I might not be one in a million right now, but I'm 22 years old. Why would I let anyone tell me that I can't become one in a million?

Brian Aquart 8:02

I'm like that. And so when you leave, you have just $5,000 in your savings. How did you navigate, especially at that age, how did you navigate the fear and logistics of that leap?

Gretchen Andrew 8:13

Well, in a way, it was easier in some ways because I hadn't become familiarized to a lifestyle that I was giving up. And I think people can leave at any age and at any point. But the relative sacrifices that I had to make, like I didn't have a mortgage, I didn't have kids, I didn't have a car, there was a lot of flexibility. And to this day, I still keep my life and working with my therapist around do I need to keep that sort of nimbleness and flexibility at this point in my life. But then it just felt very possible and very light. I I still really admire the person who did that. I mean, it was me, but I remember thinking and reading a lot of Seth Godin at the time, particularly his book, The The Dip, where he talks about strategic quitting. And I thought that, like, even if I'm gonna really make it in tech, I need a reset. This is not going the way that I want it to. And I don't feel happy or healthy or empowered. I'm way too young to not feel those things.

Brian Aquart 9:13

You know, one of the one of the things, and I appreciate you you mentioning that, I think a lot of people feel that regardless of age too, as something that that you mentioned. One of the things we talked about that I found very interesting was how you talk about reframing safety, right? Not as holding a stable job, but taking control of your own life. Can you unpack that shift for us?

Gretchen Andrew 9:35

Yeah. So something I realized in reflecting upon this transition, which is, you know, it's been like 15 years or so now, is that it didn't feel like safe to stay at Google. It felt like my identity and my life was in somebody else's hands. And what felt safe to me was a lot more control and self-branding and self-empowerment. I know a lot of people now who stayed in tech and they're losing their jobs for the first time in their lives. The industry is contracting. And they I first of all, I believe that they can go through transformation at this point as well, of course. But there wasn't as much safety there as they thought. There was temporary safety, and there I they don't have reputations or identities that they can leverage outside of the brand name of the company that they worked for. So I think that the question of what is safe in today's economy with changing jobs, consolidation, AI, everything, everyone's going to be going through major transitions. And how do you choose it? And even when you don't choose it, how do you reframe in your head, what if I chose this?

Brian Aquart 10:44

I think that's a good, that's a good thought and a good thought process to have in this. And you know, one of the things you mentioned too, even if as you just spoke, you know, this major shift was about 15 years ago. And one of the things you reflected on in our earlier conversation was that the reasons you left then feel different from how you see them now. And so looking back, and I thought it was very self-reflective of you, but looking back, what do you think was really driving you at that point?

Gretchen Andrew 11:13

So when I left, I framed it almost as an artistic experiment where I didn't have to believe in me as much as I had to believe in the technology. I said, okay, I believe in tech, I think it can be used for personal transformation. I'm going to use the internet to transform myself into an artist who has certain types of credibility, who has certain skills. So I positioned it as almost performance art. I didn't think of it at the time in that way. But I knew that there was a bunch of access to information available online. And so I said, okay, the internet will make me into an artist. I started watching YouTube videos and doing Stanford online and MoMA online. Like I cannot stress enough. It not only was I not someone who studied art, I could not draw. I did not know anybody in the art world. There was no reason to believe that this is something I could do other than that technology supposedly could do things like that. And that's what I believed in.

Brian Aquart 12:13

And so what what was that hardest part of calling yourself an artist for the first time?

Gretchen Andrew 12:18

Yeah. So I especially, it's like founder, entrepreneur, self-employed. It it means nothing until it means something. And especially I remember meeting people, my partner at the time, you know, be like, oh, you're an artist, how nice. Or even like uh not so much when I first left, but even after I'd gotten all this validation, when people hear that you're an artist, they don't immediately think like international, high-income, right? It's like this sort of crafty woman in her basement persona, I think, especially for women. And so the term artist has a weight to some people, but for me, it almost has no meaning at all because it's so easy. It's aside from the ego of it, it's not like doctor. Like you, you really anyone can give it to yourself. So the validation really came not from that label because when I had it, when I didn't have it, people tended to respond to it in the same way. And I think the that it was more deciding that I was going to get celebrated and paid for being myself. And that to me was my definition of an artist. And it's so happens that I am a more traditional artist and that I am a painter. We'll get into some of that later. But that's uh that's really the whole definition I started with. I want to be paid lavishly to be myself, and I want to be celebrated for being myself. Tech was not that kind of place at the time. I think it's even gotten worse. And so no matter what industry you are in, I think that's a definition we can all strive for in what we spend, you know, more than one third of our lives doing.

Brian Aquart 13:51

I agree. So let's talk a little bit more about this art. And when I went down the rabbit hole, I I loved, loved, loved learning more about this. And so you pioneered search engine art where you're manipulating Google results as artistic expression. So, how did this innovation even come about?

Gretchen Andrew 14:12

Right, especially now that you all know that I was at Google initially, I I did not have any inside information. I worked in HRIS information systems at Google. I knew no more about search than a marketing expert. And I had been spending the last couple years learning to paint very traditionally. And actually had found a mentor who I was spending time in his studio, very, very classical system figure drawing, charcoal, mixing paint, the whole thing. And I was making paintings that were based on his paintings. I was learning to copy his work. And so I put them on my website as being after the artist's name. This is a traditional way of attributing. But then I noticed that Google started to pick up my copies as in search results as being done by this artist. I thought, oh, that's interesting. What's going on here is that Google only deals in relevance. There's no hope, fear, love, not not a pipe. There's no actor playing Hamlet that's both Hamlet and not Hamlet. There's no liminal space here. The only relationship that exists to Google is relevance. So my, while my tech part had been quite nascent, and I had set out this vision of I will use technology to transform myself into an artist, I said, okay, I'm going to use technology to hack myself into the art world and started playing with language and playing with desire by saying, creating all of these websites about how I wanted to be on the cover of art form, which is the number one art publications, like the rolling stone, but for visual art. And so I realized that by saying over and over again in a very live journal kind of way that I want this thing, I was building relevance between myself and the object of my desire. And so that when you search for these major art institutions and magazines and awards, my artwork about wanting those things came up ahead of all of the real famous artists in the world, Damien Hurst, Jeff Koons, whatever, everyone was pushed out of the search results in this internet performance, which the art world saw as a form of power critique, institutional critique. And yeah, that's that's how I sort of got my start in the official art world.

Brian Aquart 17:46

Oh, that's well, that's that's that's brilliant. Uh so now let's go to now 2019, right? So using this methodology, like you you hacked the Freeze Art Fair, and you got a lot of global headlines. What did that moment feel like? And truthfully, what what was the fallout from all of that?

Gretchen Andrew 18:07

The art world itself was extremely open and welcoming to this because there is a tradition of power critique and institutional critique within the art world and art about making it and art about wanting to make it. So it got to exist within within that tradition. And then really, it also had a very traditional visibility aspect to it, where galleries got interested in my art practice and press got interested in my art practice. And what it really felt to me is like I had hacked into this thing and I had found a door into the supposedly very closed, very insular art world that could not have been more me. It brought all of these elements of what I was trying to do in being this painter and who I was as this technologist and being very open about what my goals were and what mattered to me. Like I wanted to be at those art fairs, I wanted to be in the Whitney Biennial. And now I'm constantly in the art fairs and I'm in the Whitney's collection. And so while it's all this technical performance, there is something sort of cosmic about it too. It's it is manifestation, it is visualization. It's just I use the internet as a global subconscious. But while doing that, I was visualizing what it would be like to be at Art Basel or Freeze and walking around and knowing people and feeling like I belonged. And so I almost wove those manifestation practices into the practice of making the art as well.

Brian Aquart 19:32

You know, one of the things I noticed you described yourself as a phoenix, right? Sometimes choosing the flames, sometimes being forced into them. So how does that metaphor help you better understand your own journey throughout this space?

Gretchen Andrew 19:48

Yeah. So I mean, it's been, you know, just talked about it being 15 years. It's been a strange 15 years too. I lost my mother and my sister unexpectedly in two different instances where one went through cancer, one through an overdose. And in both times, I felt like I was just getting my feet under me. And those were flames, epyrosis, total life changes that I did not ask for. Whereas leaving Google or leaving London the first time to move back to the US, these were major changes that I brought upon myself. And what I've learned through all of that is when I'm asking for big changes in my life, whether it's my career, my personal life, my finances, usually it gets something, something comes from nowhere and tries to knock you off your feet. And that, not just that resilience, but also the perspective that that can give. Like I don't wish this sort of grief and tragedy on anybody. I just know that when you go through it, you tend to come out of it a lot clearer. While also, to be totally honest, you fully frustrated of what felt like a decade of grief in my life where everyone else quote, you know, obviously not, but I it just felt like, wow, where would I be if I hadn't had to spend so much energy dealing with this logistically, emotionally, the whole thing. But it's it's in the same way that I've you know was making that search engine work that felt like it would be impossible without all the elements of myself. That's sort of what grief has done to me is have me become a person that makes work that I couldn't have made without that process.

Brian Aquart 21:25

I appreciate that, that um, that reflection there. And obviously my my condolences is there. You know, you you, as you just kind of alluded to, this work, your work has this intersection. It's intersected grief, harassment, rejection, and even reinvention. So, how have these struggles shaped your art and resilience as you continue to be in this world?

Gretchen Andrew 21:47

I think one of the things that's done is really pushed me to professionalize in a way that a lot of artists don't. I'm very serious about the goals that I want to achieve, who I want to reach. And I'm very aware that just because I'm an artist, I'm not any more entitled to anybody's attention. And because we do use things like social media and email and all of these other tools that are, you know, you open your Instagram, I'm trying to tell you the story of my art. At the same time, someone's trying to sell you socks. And it's it's sort of an absurdity. It's just also something that I don't feel entitled to, but I do feel able and willing to persist through to for attention, whether that's a combination of online, offline, not just marketing, but storytelling, myth making. And yeah, it's just uh a whole part of I think feeling like we have this time on earth and it's really precious. And also it's it's sort of not that serious. Like when you see myself or anyone else freaking out about their jobs, there's like very few jobs that on a day-to-day basis are actually life and death. And it's really when you sort of go through a lot of life and death, the whole work thing can feel very playful and silly and absurd, but in a way that I think can be quite nice. And at least as an artist, it can be quite nice.

Brian Aquart 23:18

Yeah. And and you know, when you think about your, you know, the hacks, right? Do you see these as purely like personal visibility tools or also as like cultural critiques of big tech?

Gretchen Andrew 23:30

Definitely both. The I also did the presidential election results in 2020, where I got my artworks about wanting of what I wanted the next American president to be and value to displace the actual results for the 2020 election in Google for a period of time. And I just wanted to show people that we shouldn't be trusting these systems, that they're highly susceptible to manipulation. I mean, I wanted people to be very impressed with me, but I also wanted people to be terrified because I don't have. Patrol farm. I'm not spending ad money. This all just comes from a structural misunderstanding about how tech works. And we say in tech as well, I guess in trusting trust. Tech and Google and all these large language models, large, large language models in AI are built upon language. And if you know anything about language, it's a highly ineffectual tool where misunderstandings take place all the time and there's gaps between words and slippage between words. And that's what makes literature and poetry so beautiful, is these things are not fixed like code. And yet we've built, especially with AI recently, this entire world as if language is stable. And I think it's just a it's it's not that I'm a technical genius, it's just that I applied my linguistics class to my programming class and saw where the gaps were.

Brian Aquart 24:52

You know, this year you talked about the Whitney um wanting to be in there, and now you're there, right? So your Facetune portraits entered the Whitney's permanent collection. First of all, congratulations. Um what what does that huge, huge milestone represent for you?

Gretchen Andrew 25:10

Aaron Powell So first of all, it's an accomplishment of what I set out to do. And the thing about the art world is you can't buy your way into it. You can't throw money at it. You have to be accepted by a certain, I don't want to just say a set of people, but a tradition and a history that does operate adjacent to the commercial art world. It means that these artworks are now part of art history. They're being preserved by the Whitney Museum in perpetuity forever. And the seriousness of that existing with artists like Edward Hopper and Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, that's the collection that they they now live in. And I mean, just aside from like, it's like being like inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And it went from I'm doing well, I think I'm figuring this out, I'm having a lot of fun, to overnight, like I've made this huge career accomplishment at 37. And now I get to enjoy the journey from here even more because I'm so certain that this is this lifetime achievement has been reached now. And while I can tell you all of the pieces that went to place, and this happened, and this happened, and this for this happened, it was exactly what I wanted. So, in a way, exactly as I had planned, exactly as I had been envisioning, just at the same time, complete magic.

Brian Aquart 26:30

And you know, what role what I what I love in hearing about that is this genuine belief in yourself, right? And I I always love seeing that, hearing it and feeling it from folks as they talk about their own stories. What role did that belief in yourself play when no institution was looking to validate your path?

Gretchen Andrew 26:50

I think one of the most important, this isn't a direct answer to your question, but I want to say this first. I think one of the most important things for anybody in pursuit of a goal is finding ways to have self-awareness about where you actually stand and having the courage to get, to know when you can get feedback. Sarah Blakely is famous for being like, don't ask anybody, launch the product and you know, until you're so sure that there's nobody that could convince you otherwise. She did a lot of other forms of research to create spanks, and and now with sneaks, I just think that with I can't exactly explain how I had the right combination of awareness is whether there's a lot of therapy, a lot of psychedelics, like who knows. But knowing that this isn't good enough, but I'm still putting it into the world, I'm not there yet. I'm going to keep going. There's skills to learn. Sometimes those skills were impersonal, sometimes those skills were literally about how the different pigments of white interact with each other, and finding people who would give advice at that level, at that level of you could be doing this better, and then reading the books, watching the YouTube videos, whatever those sets of skills are, just having some way to see what is between you and the goal. Because I it's I would have thought, oh my gosh, like the the thing between me or anyone else and making the art world is who you know, but it's not. It turns out meeting people is really easy. It it's it's it's like uh there are false negatives and there's false positives in in all worlds, but it wasn't just like, oh, I gotta get a seat at that table and then I'm there. It's like I got that seat at the table well before my work was there. And finding, yeah, just finding ways to see where you're where you can improve. Because the work that's now on the Whitney, it's definitely the best work I've ever made. I don't look back at anything I made before that and say that should have also been in there.

Brian Aquart 28:41

Wow, that's that's that's awesome to hear. And I actually can't wait to see it. So I'm look I'm looking forward to seeing it in in person. You know, we'd love to talk about some learnings now that you've you know you're you're like living in this moment. What did you learn about privilege access and gatekeeping in the art world and how did you navigate them?

Gretchen Andrew 29:02

Yeah, the art world's s funny because different forms of identity and different forms of exclusion can almost be used in certain ways as collective calls, and there are gallerists and there are people that specialize in it. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's always going to be people who have more privileges and people that have less privileges. And I know a lot of artists who can really obsess about both what they have or what they don't have, and I don't think that gets you there. We're all entering systems, we're all dealing with capitalism, we're all full of inequities, but there's at no point in which dwelling on those or telling people that they exist is going to get you to the goal unless your goal is to get rid of those inequities, which is a very good goal and what a lot of people are working really hard on. But for me, I sort of had to take what I had been given, what I hadn't been given, and start from there.

Brian Aquart 30:00

What what advice would you give someone who is chasing like an impossible dream, but they have limited resources?

Gretchen Andrew 30:09

I think sometimes it can be sort of specific, but I think what you do is you make decisions that put time on your side. Sometimes that's having a day job. Sometimes that's being healthier and sleeping better, sometimes that's finding the right mentor or not going to school and incurring a bunch of debt that doesn't put time on your side, especially in creative work, making decisions that give you more and more runway to get there and be who you need to be is the best decision that you can make.

Brian Aquart 30:38

And what what are some of the things that you've learned most about yourself throughout this this process?

Gretchen Andrew 30:44

Probably that I had to change to become the person who has these things. And that personal transformation is a lot of the point in the end. I had a lot of limiting beliefs about myself, about the art world, about what it means to be an artist, about money that were not serving my story of where I wanted to be, but were making me feel very comfortable in where I was. And I forget who said this, but I like the question of does somebody who has accomplished that goal, do they have this belief? And thinking about it through that lens of someone who has what I want, do they believe this?

Brian Aquart 31:22

And thinking about now this, you know, now you're in the Whitney, and then what I love is that obviously you're in great company, right? So has this Whitney acquisition changed your sense of validation, or do you still feel like an outsider in some ways?

Gretchen Andrew 31:38

I mean, I just feel like I've made it. I mean, to be to be honest, there's so much more I want to do, but there's not there's no one can take this away. And having made it to this point, there's, you know, a lot more I want to do. I've got other goals, I'm excited about a lot of things. But I'd already been thinking about moving from a place of arrival and abundance as opposed to a place of lack. And this becomes like the degree on the wall that I can I think what I'm trying to say is I've been very conscious that I should celebrate this moment and that I should feel very good, and that I shouldn't be like, oh, you know what, it's not MOMA, or like it's, you know, I like I should be selling my work for more money. These things that can ruin the journey. Like we're on a journey, but it is like take a minute. I like tomorrow in London, there is a big party for the acquisition, and I just get to enjoy, enjoy that.

Brian Aquart 32:35

I love that. I'm I'm also a big fan of celebrating the wins. Now typically I would say, you know, celebrate the small wins, but this is no small win, right? Like this is this is a huge win. So, but I'm I am a fan. The the theme still rings true in that, yes, celebrate your wins, celebrate yourself, uh, because especially to your point, you set out to do this, and I'm big on if I said I'm gonna do something and I then I get it and I knocked it out, boom, you know, man at my word, staying true to my word. And so that must feel so good to know that you had this on your, you know, proverbial whiteboard, right? And and you then did it. And so I'm gonna celebrate you as well. So I think that that is awesome.

Gretchen Andrew 33:15

Yeah, and it's not a proverbial whiteboard for me. I mean, it's like actual vision boards, actual affirmation, sticky notes at the mirror, like any cheesy uh affirmation visualization stuff you can imagine has been a part of me since I left Google. But maybe not, maybe not those first four or five years when I really wasn't making it anywhere. But I read a lot of self-help. I like integrating all of that into my journey. And yeah, like it's uh, I said this was the plan, so I shouldn't be as shocked as I am. And and I've I've luckily have known about this since the beginning of April, although it just became public. So I've had a little bit of time to sit with this personal transformation before the world got to hear about it, which is almost like a pregnancy of like, I know I have something coming and no one else knows, and I can grow into that. Right.

Brian Aquart 34:04

No, I like that. You know, as you think about, you know, for creatives um themselves from a device standpoint, how how can they use technology not just for visibility, but for empowerment?

Gretchen Andrew 34:15

Yeah. So I always tell my students and artists who feel stuck that pretend you have pretend you've been given the exhibition. Say that your dream gallerist or dream museum came to your studio tomorrow and said you have an exhibition, it's in two weeks. Would you actually be ready? Because you can't actually be frustrated that no one's giving you the show to work towards if you're not working towards it already. And so the way the technology really comes into this is do all of that. Like take the artist headshots, take the installation photos, build the price PDF, have all of that ready. And I've just found that whether it's a visual art or music, there's so often we're waiting to be picked. And there's so much that we can do to pick ourselves. And maybe you get to the end of that and you put on the show yourself. But more and more, what I see is if you pretend that someone's going to put you on stage at the end of this process, you'll end up on that stage because you and the work are ready to be there.

Brian Aquart 35:13

One of the things you said earlier, you said rebuilding after loss is the same skill set, whether you choose it or it's forced on you. How can others practice that skill set in their own lives?

Gretchen Andrew 35:25

I think we always have to be as clear as we can with ourselves about what we want and to not feel shame about that. Especially in my experience of being an artist, when you have no skills and no connections and are making very bad art and you tell people you want to be in the Whitney and that you want to make it as a commercial artist, it's not cool. It's not like it's not like, oh, good for you that you want to be president or break the American record in the marathon or you want to be CEO of this company. When you when it doesn't look likely, like it's not cool to talk about it that way. But I've just found that, especially to ourselves in our private moments, that we have to be comfortable with what our desires are and sort that out internally before we even can, you know, feel like if we can't admit it to ourselves or to our partners or to our friends, then it's very unlikely to happen because we're we're just hiding too much of that energy and being ashamed about wanting something.

Brian Aquart 36:25

And as you're looking forward, one of the things I I love that you've touched on throughout this conversation is how you've gotten this recognition at such a young age and you have so much one that you're looking to accomplish and going forward. So what are some of what are some of those things that you're really looking forward to most in the future?

Gretchen Andrew 36:44

When I think about the sort of cheesy middle school poster of like, oh, what would you do if you knew that you could not fail? If we think about that in terms of what would I do differently if I knew I was going to succeed? And the number one thing, even before the Whitney acquisition for me was I would enjoy this journey more. The stress, like what's is the most stressful thing is to put a bunch of effort into something that you're worried is never gonna work out. Money and investment and opportunity cost. But if you know that you're gonna get there, you don't know how, you don't know when, but you know that you'll get to that goal, everything becomes so much less stressful and so much more fun. So for me, I'm really interested in continuing to build the market for my work. And then also, not that I haven't been, but to really make masterpieces. I have the the time is on my side. I have a very long time before anyone's going to be like, oh, that was a a mistake to put our in the Whitney, and giving myself the time to make really, really good work and to push the quality of that work because I'm now an artist whose work is in this this collection. And whatever I do after this, that's a new standard for me. And I can slow down and put a lot of that into the technique, into the style, into the quality of the work as well.

Brian Aquart 38:02

And now I would love to flip the mic a little bit and ask you what's one question you have for me that I could hopefully answer.

Gretchen Andrew 38:09

Yeah. So you talk to a lot of people who are going through transitions. And I'm wondering what one of the most surprising things is that you've seen as a commonality.

Brian Aquart 38:20

Oh, that's a good one. What I would say is that the I got the origins from the pandemic. And as I've opened the aperture for who I speak with, one of the commonalities is around we don't give ourselves enough time to sit down and process the questions that we truly ask ourselves, right? So let's say for your instance, I want to be in the Whitney, right? We we say these things or we ask ourselves these questions, how do I do that? But sometimes we don't give ourselves enough time to then actually do the thing because life can get in the way and it's and it's no knock, right? I mean, I fell into it as well, right? You have responsibilities, kids, partner, whatever. But at times we don't settle ourselves, be like, all right, well, what is the plan going to be? What I love about the show is that because it's got its origins in the great resignation and the pandemic, is that the pandemic forced people to sit with those questions. It forced people now that they had all these time on their hands, because let's be honest, if you're working a nine to five, you know you're not working actually nine to five. And so now that you have all this time, those questions kept popping up for people. And then they had to answer them. And some of the answers that they then got were just beautiful. And so now they're like, okay, well, yeah, I can do this. How do I do this? Well, now I have these extra time, this extra time on my hands. Now let's just flow through this thing. And that could be creating their own art or creating their own business or doing their own thing, maybe getting pivoting to another role that better suited them. And so those are the things that I've I've come to see the most and appreciate the most because it's one of those things where from a human standpoint, you're like, oh man, I just I wish people would have had that epiphany a little earlier so that they didn't have to go through the quote unquote struggle. But then on the other side, I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth now, well, the struggle made them who they are. So you kind of kind of, you know, it's a bit of a battle there. But I think that's a great question.

Gretchen Andrew 40:19

Yeah, it's so interesting because we're sort of given, you know, a small handful of times in our lives that we're allowed to consider what we want to do. Maybe when we graduate college or we leave high school, maybe when we retire, and to check in and say, all right, is this it? Yeah, a lot of people are forced into that conversation these days with themselves. And maybe a lot of your listeners aren't choosing it necessarily, but it's it's uh yeah, it's it's a it's a journey to get through it, but man, is it worth it? Absolutely, absolutely.

Brian Aquart 40:53

Well, Gretchen, look, I want to thank you for joining the show today. It's been a pleasure getting to know you, hearing about your story. You know, it's different hearing it from you than reading about it. And so that's what I've loved. Uh and I I'd love to stay, you know, connected with you. I'm in New York and would be interested, would love to check out the piece and get your perspective on it. So if you're ever open to, you know, a little one-to-one tour, let me know. I'm uh I will make myself available uh to do that for sure. Um, but would love for you to share with our listeners where they can find your work and support some of the things that you're doing.

Gretchen Andrew 41:32

Yeah, absolutely. So my website is Gretchenandrew.com. And if you sign up to my email list, that's how you can get invited to the fun, fancy artworld exhibitions, if that's your thing. The work probably won't be on display in the Whitney until at least another year. But I do have similar works in New York and London at most times. So definitely get on my email list, find me on Instagram at Gretchenandrew, and I'd really love to hear about what you're thinking about and maybe what some of your hopes and concerns are in thinking about leaving, because it's uh it's definitely something that can benefit from having a lot of support from. Absolutely.

Brian Aquart 42:09

And that's actually one of the themes of the show, right? So we don't we don't talk about resignations enough, and I just don't want people to feel like they have to go through this alone. And so that's really what the platform is all about. And so I'm I appreciate you you raising that. Well, look, that'll do it for today's episode. Again, I want to thank my guest, Gretchen Andrew, for joining us. All of her information will be in our show notes, and I hope you all have a great week, and we'll definitely see you next time. Gretchen, thank you.

Gretchen Andrew 42:36

Thank you, Brian.

Brian Aquart 42:37

Thanks for listening to why I left. Join us next time for more inspiring stories about growth, resilience, and transformation. Visit us online at www.yileft.co. That's whyileft.co.