Landscapes of Mind

Join Anne Grgich in exploring the art of painting Landscapes of Mind. Learn how to create deep portraits of soul composing landscapes and faces with collage and ephemera to create color fields and build form with color. Anne shows how she gets her deep jewel-like effects. Students will work on two portraits in tandem, and will experience hands on and individual time with teacher through out the day. Anne offers an amazing learning experience where she shares her own passionate process and infects you with it along the way. Slides will be shown of Annie's paintings, and demonstrations will be given throughout class. Create stunning abstract portraiture imagery with master collage and portrait painter. Grgich offers her unique outlook in painting, building elements with collage in an easy to understand process of mixing mediums, she gives away her methods of collage and painterly technique.

Landscapes of Mind: Per Day Fee (per student) $100
Kit/Materials/Travel/Lodging (teacher fee) $35
Min/Max # of Students: 4-10 1-2 days
Class Length: 6 hours per day (extra time if allowed)

Bring two canvases or any hard surface, plaque or wood around 11 x 14" or maybe four 8 x 8" canvas Pre-Selected Collage materials, patterns, Iconographical imagery, fancy ceilings, altars iconic imagery, faces, acrylics, nail polish, PVA Glue or Gel Medium, paint brushes, scissors, fitch fan brushes are my favorites.

Optional Items: Gold Leaf, Colored Tapes, Paint Pens, Stickers, Photos, Fancy Papers, Golden Tar Gel, Beeswax, Golden Asphaltum colored and Golden Metallic colored Glaze. Non Toxic Color pigments. Pastel Crayons, most of these items will be available to use if you want to experiment. You will be collaging and painting and learning Annie's methods to take off and add to your own style and methods. I will bring plenty of extra superb collage pieces to fill in areas, so no worries. I will also bring a wax crock pot.

Notes: If you pre-select the collage for class and organize by color-patterned paper, flat items you've been saving, only bring the best, keep it simple, less than 5 collage pieces per surface to paint on.

“The Plastic Art of Painting Carried into the Future" I find it difficult translating my work to words, so much involved in my work and where it comes from, all at once: bold and luminous, painterly, gritty, grotesque, hysterical, historic histrionic, neo-primitive Byzantine, cartooning, over potpouri montage, collage onslaught treated to various ends for color, (as a palette) as form, as reference, reverence and design-all treated with this over-calligraphy in my own religious vernacular- a feverish automatic painting vocabulary, (with infinite, mutating dialects). The answer in my many languages to: "what does one do as an artist?" For intuition, I'm absorbent as a sponge. Yet hell bent on new vision on creation-to find voice/of style of vocabulary of my own/while being simultaneously barraged and assailed by a world media machine that pumps imagery out as well as absorbs & incorporates all that is not purely original as it's own generic status-quo redeeming value system.

I'm wrestling the media barrage- "The old masters", religious icons of the dominant paradigms- "flip them, pin them, put them in a meat grinder and creates anew: refining, molding, sculpting into bas-relief through a vast personal lexicon intensely cross-referencing itself via my hand into free dimensional form as texture, pattern, icon, story, creature, cartoon, collage and ultimately an ultimate grotto-esque upon the virtual reality cave of the pop icon factory.

Written by Anne Grgich, Paul Gasoi 2003
“The Plastic Art of Painting Carried into the Future"



Top painting, "The Golden Age" 1998 In the Collection of ZymoGenetics Inc. Seattle, Washington

The Obsessive Paintbrush

Anne Grgich shares her obsessive intense painting techniques and a full repertoire of painting and brushstroke method. Anne assists in students' creation of passionate painterly works on paper or canvas. Express your imagination more directly by practicing connectedness of hand and eye in playful painting exercises practicing with mixed media and layering, color and form.

Take a day to learn how to make full sweeping brushstrokes and gestures and move swirling paint-passionately onto canvass from within and realize your painterly touch. Enjoy a full day of prolific creation and guidance from an inspired teacher. You will learn how to carve and layer and paint up a storm. Annie provides almost all of the materials and takes you by the hand and through the process. The class is designed to move fast and will be a blast and you wll go home with lots of pieces.

The Obsessive Paintbrush:
Per Day Fee (per student) $100
Kit/Materials/Travel/Lodging (teacher fee) $35
Min/Max # of Students: 4-10 1-2 days
Class Length: 6 hours per day (extra time if allowed)



To Bring List: Canvas paper pack, at least 12 sheets, or a pad of thick paper, or matte board or any surfaces you want to paint on. Fitch Fan Brush, 2 Medium Brushes, Water Cup, Golden Self Leveling Gel or Gel medium, special acrylic paints if you desire. Large Black Sharpie Markers.

Optional Items: Paper and pen for notes, special favorite paints, some collage elements ie: patterned tissue paper.

Teacher Supplies: Glue, Acrylic Paints, Golden Acrylic Glazes: Textured Papers, Silk Ribbons, Beeswax, Heat Guns, Experimental Painting Tools, Paper Towels, Brushes, Pastels, waxes, varnishes, acrylic tar, tissues, gold leaf and Chromatone Metallic Latex Paints, some collage elements, and a variety of stickers and tapes, Handouts: Provided at class with illustrated instructions.

Pop Art Rose

In the spirit of pop art create an intense mosaic collage utilizing Red Rose Tea Labels. Learn how to build an obsessive textural sub-structure into grid-like multiples. Embed design in composition and explore color-field development. Construct your own embellishments from super sculpty to integrate your own patterns, decorations and design onto the collage and frame. Learn how to leave things open to random chance and possibility while creating a game-like experience in the tradition of Dada. Artists will be learn techniques to help you relax and get in touch with your intuition.

Pop Art Rose: Per Day Fee (per student): $100
Kit/Materials/Travel/Lodging (teacher fee) $35
Min/Max # of Students: 4-10 1-2 days Class Length: 6 hours per day (extra time if allowed)

Items to bring for Pop Art Rose: Any size Gessoed Canvas under 14 x 16” Paint brushes, Elmers glue, Golden self-leveling gel, 200 Red Rose Tea Labels, puzzle pieces, stamps or small paper mosaic-like flat paper cutouts-make your own 1 x 3/4” tiles by hand and bring to class. Sharpie pens, Exacto knife, acrylic or gouache.

Supplies teacher will bring: Super Sculpty, heat gun, beeswax, crock pot, gold leaf, colored tapes, tissue paper, water based asphaltum tar, Golden Tar Gel and natural color pigment. PVA Glue or Gel Medium, and Elmers Glue, paint brushes, scissors, fitch fan brushes are my favorites. Golden Self-Leveling Gel.

Painterly Portrait Books

You will transform a book into an intense visual journal of personality and autobiography with the use of collage and paint. The class offers an informative slide presentation where you will get inspired by a wide range of artistic techniques. Annie gives book painting demonstrations though out the day in a positive atmosphere with intuitive painting assistance. Learn how to unify collage and various methods of her style developed over 25 years.





This is a lively day of creating and absorbing methods to achieve Annies highly detailed ancient feel in your own work. Students will have their art passion awakened by the constant creative energy of the class, they will learn how to paint with coffee, wax, acrylics, and get the various painting surfaces of Anne Grgich’s richly painted books.

Luscious Portrait Books: Per Day Fee (per student) $100
Kit/Materials/Travel/Lodging (teacher fee) $35
Min/Max # of Students: 4-10 1-2 days
Class Length: 6 hours per day (extra time if allowed)

To bring list: One old book about 10 pages maximum, about 8 x 10”enough collage to cover the pages you will paint in, you can glue every few pages together-gesso not necessary, if you select children’s heavy board books, you must sand the pages first.

PVA or Glues that dry clear
Small, medium and fat brush or fitch fan brush
5 small tubes of paints
a water cup
paper towels
good pair of light weight scissors
Sharpie or a permanent marker

Supplies Provided by Teacher: Beeswax and iron, acrylic non-toxic asphaltum tar, gold leaf, tar gel, heat guns, freeze dried instant coffee, golden tar gel, kids school glue. Different surprise collage elements are offered in each class.



Anne Grgich is one of the most original and innovative of the group of American artists known as Outsiders. Completely self-taught, and on the cover story of Raw Vision Magazine (#22), she became known for her one-of-a-kind books filled with page after page of impassioned, expressionistic faces and figures. Grgich often employs collage and vigorously applies layer after layer of over-painting, covering found texts and images, yet allowing some of the underneath to remain visible. This layering suggests generations of mystery and mystique to her exotic characters." -Phil Demise-Smith, Gallery A Studio

The Opulent Goddess

Join Anne Grgich and on a mixed media journey to create a sparkling lavish tactile fitted looking golden book-like one the angels brought down from heaven. Build a mosaic-like jeweled fortress to hold your ultimate personal icons. This beautiful inlaid book is created in a day or 2 day workshops depending on how lavish and swift you want the book completed. Inspire your Goddess to shine in all its charm, make up your own stories in a book to honor the spiritual and delightful beauty and feminine fortune that lies with in you.

Anne Grgich will share her ongoing creative process with you in a generous, spirit-lifting day of creative Goddess play. This is a class for all levels. Build a scrumptious book full of portraits of beauties and princesses, queens and matron gods. The main emphasis will be on creating a powerful personal book and learn new methods of simplistic luscious construction a fun creative girly intensive for ladies. In this class you can return to your inner your Princess, bring on the Queen and make an elaborate precious book.

Ideas to enhance the class project: Judkins "Amazing Glaze" and a heat gun, Super Sculpty, Gold Leaf, Wax, Extra Super Glue Wire, Lace, Velvet Fabrics, (paper from) Patterned Wall Paper Books, poems. Beads, marbles, costume thrift-store bags of costume jewelry, cups of fake pearls, rhinestones, shiny thingies, old dangly earrings, small dolls, cameos, clear glass marbles (flat on one side) ivory buttons and waxed linen, ephemeral, lettering, special stamps, stickers, sea shells. Opulent fabric scraps, gold, lace, velvet small pieces of brocade or ribbon, if have on hand needlepoint square, or heavy fabric for binding, and any kind of miniature bauble, knick knacks, or beautiful-expendable do-dads-and recycle transformative debris...

The Opulent Goddess: Per Day Fee (per student): 100.00
Kit/Materials/Travel/Lodging (teacher fee: $35)
Min/Max # of Students: 4-10 1-2 days
Class Length: 6 hours per day (extra time if allowed)

Supply List: Lightweight Matching thriftstore, (plastic or Wood) Gold Frames. If you cant find matching ones you can contact Anne for ideas. Scissors/Exacto Knife/Hole Punch, Gorrilla Glue, Wood glue/Hard as nails/Super Glue/Airplane Model Glue (any 2) Acrylic paints- (a small set) acrylic paints brushes and paint pens. Clear Glass Glitter/Angel Dust-Glitter, 1.50 cups clear glass mosaics, and/or a colored glass mosaic pieces. Gobs of baubles, used jewelry to embellish covers. Photo of your lovely Goddess self, 5-8 colored luscious woman prints to fit in the book. Old master queens and dainty girls, pictures of frumpy, frilly women's dresses or doll books or or collage of any Goddesses of your desire. Goddess inspired collage materials, poems, miniature goddesses or dolls to create hybrid goddess queens, bows, ribbons, favorite pretty little things.

Instructor will provide: A range of materials for use in books, wires, wax crock pot, holes punch, sand paper, self leveling gel, ribbon, lace, pretty papers, matte board, opalesant paint, gold leaf, and a free box of boken tid-bits and baubles to pick from will be available.



OP-U-LENT-definition

1. Possessing or exhibiting great wealth; affluent.
2. Characterized by rich abundance; luxuriant.

Museum Création Franche, March 2005, Issue #24

Life pulsating, troubled, exalting – work by Anne Marie Grgich

Crown Yourself is a truly enigmatic picture. It is Victorian rather than oriental in feel; a vision of a goddess out of some fin-de-siècle drawing room stuffed with an eclectic mix of furniture and décor from Europe, India and the East nestled among aspidistra plants in rare china pots. Yet, this visage is a breathing, living presence. Two large eyes stare steadily out at the viewer, their twin green mandala irises inviting us to plunge through and experience the cosmic plenitude they seem to promise – perhaps to discover something about our own soul in the process. The great mouth might be open wide in the act of utterance. Or is it closed, in a more profound silence, with great, dark green lips edged only by a thin, pink penumbra? If you move up close to those lips two lines of fractured words appear. Partly illegible, like a visual stutter, they reveal enough to intrigue us, but explain nothing: ‘the heart and stomach … Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe’. At the same time much is apparently revealed of the interior life of the figure – the vast atrium of a domed, Romanesque church, a simple drawn portrait face of a man, a head of the Buddha in the centre of her forehead. Though what, exactly, we are left to intuit for ourselves.

This same sense of connection and a desire for dialogue penetrates the viewer who spends time with any of Anne Marie Grgich’s mixed media collage paintings. Titles like Chesapeake, Kitty Queen, and Aparition only add to the sense of questioning that is an abiding result of contact. Yet, her works have a depth and complexity, arising out of an essentially straightforward method of construction, that reward long contemplation with the promise of a kind of revelation. Characteristically this group of works consists of a single, forceful hieratic image – most often a female face – constructed out of a mixture of decorative and graphic elements that function simultaneously as constitutive parts of the main form and as distinct images in themselves. In this way a kind of push and pull of vision is set up that produces continued movement from the whole to the part, which is itself also a whole.

If visuality is privileged texture is also important. Anne’s work is distinctly physical and often luscious in its surfaces, so that the viewer wants to touch as well as look. Sometimes this has unexpected effects. For example, though it is jewel-like to look at, the actual surface of Crown Yourself is wrinkled like old, cold skin. Similarly there are a number of handmade books whose intense imagery in saturated pigments is overlaid on Braille text: vision collides with its absence. In this case, the touching viewer encounters remnants of the regular embossed dots of Braille text, working against the impasto of the image. The Braille reader, presumably, would encounter a torn textual fragment among the lumps and furrows of impasto. In each case, we are left with a powerful reassertion of the senses of touch and sight.

Born in Portland, Oregon in 1961, Anne Grgich began making spontaneous art at the age of fifteen, mostly by clandestinely painting in her family’s books, or making junk constructions. She first introduced collage into her work around 1988, but took it to a higher level in 1997 during a period of illness. During her convalescence she worked in bed, making paintings on file cards and CD’s and organising collages from material she had collected. When she had recovered, later that year she began to produce collage paintings – images of people encountered over time in the street and in mind journeys that manifest themselves and recombine, according to her mood, in the process of creation. Recently, she has described her faces and people as ‘manifestations of conglomerated persona, in a way acting out these characters’. In a way they are a displacement for action in the world out there; fragments of experience, thought and interaction brought together to produce new possibilities out of contemplation. As she puts it, ‘bundling images, separating them’, then looking for ‘interrelating pieces to build meaning and feeling’. Seen separately these faces are individually commanding, but seen together, they form not so much a series of portraits as a group of living presences.

In practice the works operate on a very shallow picture space; everything takes place on or near the picture surface, with any depth produced mostly by a literal layering of materials and the incongruous introduction of perspective in some of the collaged elements, as in Aparition (1997), whose facial skin is rendered from a heady mix of collaged fragments of reproductions of Old Master paintings. Collage helps to effect an almost alchemical transformation in the works, through its function as sign, to its active involvement in the dialogue between paint, drawing and resin. In Crown Yourself, for example, a print of a decorative architectural detail also provides the shape of the somewhat feline nose of the woman’s face, whilst the cheeks consist mainly of two halves of a decorative plate and decoupage prints of apple blossom, a rose, and a ginger cat. Resin is often introduced to seal individual layers, enabling untroubled work at the next stage up, whilst also making complete effacement of previous work impossible. In this way the process might be likened to the growth of towns, where succeeding populations establish new levels above the old, through which traces of the past nevertheless show. Thus, actual depth is established on the picture surface, with a number of results. In Crown Yourself the living, penetrating eyes clearly consist of at least three separate layers of work. Other elements, on the contrary, are subtly buried in the whole by the smoothing effect of the resin, or encased like fading memories.

Collage can be a powerful force for a creator who is interested in the chance encounter and the production of new meaning out of the unexpected, rather than the banal re-rehearsing of the commonplace. In Anne Grgich’s work collage, when bound together by paint, resin and pen, often provides the equivalent of a city walk; a distillation of the little marginalia of experience, things noticed out of the corner of one’s eye, as well as more expectedly assertive phenomena. This is especially powerful at times in her handmade books, which can look like a little pile of discarded packaging at first glance, but which reveal a rich treasure when opened and pored over. ‘Practicality and simplicity’ have, as she says, influenced her style, driven by the need for visual clarity and lack of space and materials. On one level, therefore, she makes books ‘partially because I can squeeze twenty paintings in a 20 x 25 cm book’.

The book format also introduces a further element of interactivity in the encounter with Anne’s work. They are made out of the individual experience of their creator, but are pregnant with the possibility of endless narrative journeys in the hands of each person who picks them up. In these ‘narratives’ anything is possible: cigar labels jostle with warnings about locks and fragments of ancient wallpaper patterns of a rural idyll; beads, string, and sticks of gum are embedded in resin laid over collaged images; a woman’s face is painted over various elements, from candy wrappers to a vaguely pornographic moving image of a woman posing with a car, which then rejoin the game of representation and memory. A fragment of admonitory text on this last page might serve as a guide for approaching all of Anne’s work: ‘Don’t ask why’. However, do ask any other question of these enigmatic images, and do explore with opened eyes and mind.

Colin Rhodes
Museum Création Franche, March 2005, Issue #24
2 January 2005

Raw Vision Magazine Issue #22 the Books of Ane Grgich

Anne Grgich is essentially a self-taught artist. She has filled countless notebooks with poetry and sketches or 'doodles' since her childhood. These books have a long and circuitous evolution into her present, fabulously dense collage paintings and painted books. Grgich works on canvas and still fills books but instead of a pen, she uses a brush, pens, crayons, wax and whatever else comes her way. The poetic words have disappeared. In their place, Grgich paints sharply peculiar yet forcefully compelling human faces. Her images have a pure visionary nature.

Grgich's life has been more traumatic than most. At age nineteen, she suffered from a serious car accident that placed her in a coma for two months and has consequently caused her pain and surgery ever since. After the accident she became mixed up in a mind-controlling cult. She escaped but joined a punk-rock subculture involved with drugs, and married an addict. When she found herself pregnant, Grgich pulled herself together, left drugs and an abusive marriage behind and gave birth to her son Jasper. Despite all the suffering, troubles and confusion, Grgich never stopped making art. She said, it's what gets her through.

From raw Vision magazine Issue #22 "The Books of Anne Grgich" Rose Gonnella interviews Anne Grgich and looks at the meaning of her endless drive to create- to see more: http://www.rawvision.com/back/grgich/grgich.html



Note from Anne Grgich:

"I frequently travel teaching inspirational workshops geared toward all levels, all ages in many formats, that together make the bulk of my creativity, teaching what I know and use in my work. The Opulent Goddess book was born out of having to come up with a splendid new and easy project. (Thanks Lauren Atkinson) If your a just getting started or looking for a teacher with a unique approach that gurantees a powerful creative push this is the right class for you, and many of my students all say they are on a different level after taking my class and that I help open artists up.

Recently I lectured and gave slide shows at Eastern Oregon University, for an auditorium of 500 people on my work and on the exhibition I created with Professor Colin Rhodes from the UK, AU. The exhibition has over 27 artists including my own work. The exhibition website: http//internalguidancesystems.com (thanks Paul Gasoi)

For teaching experience, I've traveled to Green Bay University, in Green Bay Wisconsin, to teach and lecture, (thanks Norbert H. Kox) and with Glenny at Art and Soul, Virginia, Art Unraveled, in Phoenix Arizona, taught twice in Lake Elsinore, California, will have been twice in January 2007 in Port Townsend Washington. I also taught privately to a lovely group of ladies near Chicago and in Baltimore, Maryland at the beautiful art workshops at The American Folk Art Museum.

I also worked in a great art store with a beautiful studio workshop in Savage Maryland at the Queens Ink. I have taught in Seattle since 1990 at the Seattle Center, The Pacific Art Center, Art Reach, Arts Corps, and volunteered art class in many of my sons grade school years.

I first started teaching in 1983 at The Multahnomah Learning Center, in Portland Oregon. Currently I am teaching privately with Art on Taylor in January 2007 and at The Art House in Nashville, Tennessee February 2008 and with Linda Young-ARt Unraveled August 2007, and other workshops lining up for 2007-2008. I hope to be traveling abroad by 2008". By Anne Grgich, December 2006



Lynne Hoppe and Jackie Pallister- Glass Artists and painters from Port Townsend, Washington works after classes in December 2006

Angel Escale- Artist from California while working on her book-2006.

For information on teaching and
lecturing please contact: angelicagrgich@gmail.com
(private teaching prices may differ).
See my website for gallery, resume and other images and information updates: http://www.annegrgich.com
If you want to use any part of my writings or images
you must have permission-
Copyright Anne Grgich 2007



P.S. I want to thank my old friends Richard-who saved my life and for inspiring me with philosophy in my teens and my Uncle Jim, who gave me inspiration to keep working on faces, and Rob Collison-for all the trash and collaborations, and Maitland Frank Jones for their early on collage and book inspirations and thanks all my friends and neighbors who have left magazines and books at my door when my son was a baby and Tegan, first for giving me a beautiful son and also for giving me the Red Rose Tea label collecting idea in 1986, I finally had enough to make a painting by 1996, but they changed the label on the rose so it looks like a red-nose....

Experience of Anne Grgich

Masked Faces Confronting a Hostile World: Notes on the Art of Anne Grgich
by Tom Patterson

The annual Outsider Art Fairs in New York City's SoHo district can generally be counted on to provide a rich and intense visual experience for collectors and other interested viewers, but they hardly make an ideal context in which to see an artist's work for the first time. These multi-gallery exhibitions of art by self-taught individuals from all over the world are always crowded with so much raw and powerful work--much of it by the loosely defined genre's most well known exponents, such as Wölfi, Darger, Traylor, and Finster--that it can be hard to fully focus one's attention on the relatively small portion of work by lesser known artists. And yet it was in this setting that I first laid eyes on the work of Anne Grgich. Despite the small scale and overloaded surroundings, Grgich's multi-layered, expressionistic collage paintings and drawings grabbed my attention as soon as I glanced at them.

My initial exposure to Grgich's work at the MIA Gallery's booth at the 1994 Outsider Art Fair prompted me to seek further information about the artist and to look at other examples of her art. Subsequently my appreciation for her work grew, as did my interest in the anomalous position she occupies within the so-called "outsider" art field. This subset of the contemporary art world is a domain that, unfortunately, is governed in large part by commercially driven stereotypes, from which Grgich deviates sharply on most counts. She is an obsessive image maker whose art doesn't derive from techniques and theories she picked up in art school, and in that sense she is self-taught. The crisis and instability that have marked much of her personal life also place her in the company of many other artists who have been described as "outsiders." But all artists--all people-- have serious personal problems to deal with and psychological demons to face. While "outsider" artists have often been categorized as naive in matters of art as well as life, that distinction certainly doesn't apply to Grgich. An artistically savvy uncle, who recognized her talent when she was still a child. introduced her at an early age to Modernism and, in particular, the works of Schwitters, Dubuffet, Beckmann, Klee, and Miro. She took an art class at the public high school she attended in Portland, Oregon, where she grew up, and in the early 1980's studied for two months at the Portland Museum Art School. Several years later she won a scholarship to the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where she logged a full semester. In between these brief art school stints she sought out the fringes of West Coast youth culture, hanging out with....others who shared her disaffection for mainstream, middle-class white culture in which she was raised.

During her late teens and twenties, Grgich was involved in a series of accidents that left her injured and in pain, which led to several years of drug dependency. Nevertheless, in the midst of what she called the "craziness" of her life in those years, she continued to make art at a prolific rate and began showing it in gallery exhibitions. Her productivity came to a temporary halt for a few months in late 1983 and early '84, due to the insidious influence of an exploitative Christian cult that she joined in what she describes as a partly drug-induced state of "paranoia and confusion." With the help of friends, she extricated herself from the cult, but unfortunately, she burned most of her drawings, paintings, and writings during the period when she was under its influence. After leaving the fanatical religious group, she threw herself back into her creative activities and worked feverishly at her art through the late '80s--a period that witnessed momentous changes in her life, including a highly troubled two-year marriage, the birth of her son, a bitter child-custody battle, and the death of her mother in a hit-and-run auto accident. During these years she lived a fairly restless existence, moving back and forth between Portland, San Francisco and finally Seattle, where she has made her home since 1988.

Grgich perceived the painful experiences that dominated her life during the '80s as a "cycle of terror" that kept her constantly on edge, but she managed to survive those harrowing times to see better days in the '90s. Her circumstances in recent years have been far more conducive to art making, and she has broadened her artistic range accordingly. In addition to the large-scale oil paintings and art-historically referenced portrait collages she has recently been working on, she continues to make the elaborate painted books that evolved from her teenaged journals of the '70s, and which have constituted the central thread in her art. These distinctive works are characteristic of Grgich's transformative aesthetic. With their layers upon layers of imagery, her recent books embody an uneasy dialogue between innocence and experience. In creating them, she typically begins with old children's storybooks, preferably from the 1950s, then she draws paints, and collages her own images directly over--and without thematic reference to--the original texts and illustrations, occasionally allowing isolated fragments of the printed materials to remain visible. The mask-like, slit-eyed faces that stare back at the viewer from the patched and impastoed pages of these books represent people she has know of figures from her highly-charged imagination, like ghosts from her tortured past or apparitions out of a hallucinatory drug experience. She compulsively works and reworks these pages until they leave her possession for the growing number of exhibits and collections in which her art is represented. Despite the similarity of this process to the obsessiveness with which many "outsider" artists create their work--and also in spite of her imagery's rawness--Grgich's books are highly sophisticated works that deserve to be taken seriously within the larger framework of contemporary art. To pigeonhole or ghettoize her art in the culturally problematical subcategory of outsider art is to do it a disservice. Although highly personal and idiosyncratic, her work metaphorically alludes to social and psychological issues that are increasingly pertinent to all of us, and especially to this country's younger citizens. It is an art which confronts and stares boldly back at an often violent and hostile world that appears to be falling apart at the seams.

Tom Patterson is a writer and independent curator who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and writes regularly about contemporary visual art and artists. he is the author of St. EOM in The Land of Pasaquan, among other books and exhibition catalogs. His work also appears in publications such as Art Papers, the New Art Examiner, and ARTnews.

Catalog, '96
MIA Gallery
"Masked Faces Confronting a Hostile World: Notes of the Art of Anne Grgich"
Article by Tom Patterson



From the underground punk scene of Portland in the 1980's, to the new, uncertain realities of the 21st century, Anne Grgich has simply created her way through it all. The work of Annie Grgich has been shown at art fairs since the early 1990's and she was featured on the cover of Raw Vision magazine in 1998. Her work is typified by powerful imagery, most often faces, created by use of a variety of mixed media. "The faces I paint are from people I know or have observed, and are representations of that person from the inside out". Garde Rail Gallery, Seattle, Washington http://www.garde-rail.com/

TEACHING EXPERIENCE OF ANNE GRGICH

2007
AOT Gallery, Port Townsend, WA
Art House Gallery, Nashville, TN
Art Unraveled, Phoenix, AZ
2006
AVAM, American Visionary Art Museum Baltimore, MD.
The Queens Ink, Savage, Baltimore
Arts Corps, Seattle Urban Academy, Seattle, Washington
The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington
Art Fest, Port Townsend, WA
A Little Bizaar, Lake Elsinore, CA
Art Unraveled, Phoenix Arizona
Art & Soul, Fall Art Retreat, Virginia
Green Bay University, Green Bay, Wisconsin
Eastern Oregon University, Eastern Oregon
Private Art Workshop near Chicago IL
2005
Art & Soul, Hampton, Virginia
Art Werx, Vancouver BC
Arts Corps, Seahurst Elementary, Burien, Washington
Art Fest, Port Townsend, WA
Art Unraveled, Phoenix, AZ
Art Intensive, 8 Weeks, Seattle, WA-Private Lessons
2004
Art Unraveled, 3 days, Phoenix, AZ
Art Fest, Port Townsend, WA
The Queen Anne Toddler Art Society, Seattle, WA
Sand Point Way/Magnuson Naval Station, Seattle, WA Teen Art Project
2003
Sand Point Way/Magnuson Naval Station Teen Art Project: Book Painting Project/Technography
Seattle Center High Seattle, WA Summer Mentor Teen Book Arts w/ L. Atkinson
Green Bay University, Green Bay, WI Artist Lecture, Book Making Workshop
2002
Ballard High School, Seattle, WA Poetry Book Design, Sponsored by Art Reach
2001
Saint George Elementary, Seattle, WA Painting and Book Making
2000
Crest Learning Center, Mercer Is, WA MM & Book Arts Instructor
2000–2001
MADD, Youth Conference, Nashville, TN Directing Teen Mural Painting
Art Reach, Class Planning, Seattle, WA Mixed Media & Book Arts Instructor
Orion, High School Painting, Seattle, WA MM & Book Arts Instructor
1996
Seafirst Gallery, Seattle, WA, Art Exhibit-Book Art, House Project, Workshop and Sea First Gallery Exhibition “AWay to Say, Youth Art Exchanges”, sponsored by Pacific Arts Center & Sea First Bank
1988
San Francisco City College, San Francisco, CA Lecture in Humanities
1983
Multnomah Learning Center, Portland, OR Quilt Project and Collage Instruction, studio witnesses the production of “Random Phenomena” , magazine.

EXHIBITION HISTORY OF ANNE GRGICH

2006-2008
Internal Guidance Systems, The show represents a critical cross section from the vanguard of a new modern movement in visionary art, curated by Anne Grgich, Colin Rhodes.

Select Tour Dates: Mark Woolley Gallery, Portland, OR May 2006
N4th Gallery Albuquerque, NM June 2006
Outsiders and Others, Minneapolis, MI Fall 2006
Tag Gallery, Nashville TN. February 2007
Garde Rail Gallery, Seattle, WA 2008
Track 16, Santa, Monica, CA 2008
Gallery Horse Cow, Sacramento, CA
Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC
AOT Gallery, Port Townsend, WA

Additional Venues to be announced through 2008, see website and full page ads in Raw Vision Magazine, In the process of producing a full color book with essays by Colin Rhodes, Jen. P. Borum, Tom Patterson, and photographer, Ted Degener.

2007
Henry Boxer Gallery, Outsider Art Fair, NYC
Gallery bourbon Lally, Outsider Art Fair, NYC
2006
Mark Woolley Gallery, Small Wonders, Group Exhibition, Portand, OR
Art Singulier Festival, Incarceration, Summer, France
Art Haus, Month Long Group Show, Nashville, TN.
Arts Corps Visual Artists Exhibition at Harrison St. Gallery: March 21 – April 17 (opening reception Thursday March 23
The Outsider Art Fair, NYC Henry Boxer Gallery, London, UK
The Outsider Art Fair, NYC Gallery Bourbon Lally, Canada
2005
The Mark Woolley Gallery, Small Wonders 8 week group show, Portland, Oregon
Museum Création Franche, Créations Dissidente, 6 Artists, Bègles, France
Create Fixate, Spring Arts Tower, Gallery Row, Los Angeles, CA
Taylor Spring Arts Tower, Gallery Row, Los Angeles, CA
The Kentuck Arts Festival, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
4 X NW, Garde Rail Gallery, Seattle, WA.
The Atlanta Folk Art Fair, Marietta, GA, Garde Rail/Gallery Marcia Weber
Art Haus Gallery-Group Show, Nashville, TN
The Outsiders Gallery, CT. Anne Grgich / Mr. Imagination
Simply Red, The Mark Woolley Gallery, Portland, Oregon
International Outsider Art Fair, NYC, Gallery Bourbon Lally, Montreal, BC
Marcia Weber Gallery, at Broome St. Gallery, NYC, 12th Annual exhibit
Gallery Herenplaats, Rotterdam, The (U.S.) of the Unconscious, Group Show
Art Singulier International Festival, Aubagne, France
Harmony Gallery, Hollywood, CA “Divine Messages”, curated and exhibited
Slotkin Folk Art Auction, From the Rosenak Collection, GA.
2004
AAF Gallery, NYC, Represented by Gallery Bourbon Lally, Montreal, BC
The Kentuck Arts Center, Tuscaloosa, AL “The Kentuck Arts Festival”.
The Mark Woolley Gallery, Portland, OR “Miniatures”, curated and exhibited
ART HAUS/Harmony Books Gallery, Hollywood, Thornton Dial/Anne Grgich
The Walker Gallery, Milwaukee WI.“Sister Stories” Della Wells / David Smith
International Outsider Art Fair, NYC Represented by Henry Boxer Gallery
2003
Artesian, Edinburgh, Scotland UK “Symptom & Symbol: Art/Healing Process”
James Coleman/Pauline Flach Production, The Outlaws,“Wanted” Cuidado! Armandos Y Peligrosos, Vivos O Muertos,“ London, UK
Inspired Art Fair, London, England, UK,
Intuit Art Fair, Chicago, IL,“Yard Dog Gallery
Cobalt Design, Marietta, GA “The World of Anne Grgich & Norbert H. Kox”
Atlanta Folk Festival, Norcross, GA, Garde Rail, TAG Gallery
2002
Garde Rail Gallery, Seattle, WA “The Method of Annie - 12 Years of Anne Grgich” (solo exhibition)
Garde Rail Gallery, Seattle, WA ”Scattered, Smothered & Covered, Southern American Outsider & Folk Art”
Three Gallery, San Pedro, CA “Held Ransom”, Dysfunctional Relationships
Yard Dog Folk Gallery, Austin TX Magic Seven, Group Show
TAG Art Gallery, Nashville, TN, Recent Grgich & Apocalyptic Art
Garde Rail Gallery, Seattle, WA, Blocks & Totems: The Toy Show
2002-2003
American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD “HIGH on LIFE”
2002-2005 Exhibits USA Curated & toured by a subdivision of the Mid-America Arts Alliance,“Revelations and Reflections-Select Tour Dates:
The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR. September 01, 02 - October 20, 02
Stedman Art Gallery, Camden, NJ November 10, 2002 - January 07, 2003
Southern Ohio Museum, Portsmouth, OH January 28, 2003 - March 16, 2003
Union College, Schenectady, NY June 16, 2003 - August 11, 2003
UNLV Barrick Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada, Nov. 10, 2003 Dec.14, 2003
Paris Gibson Sq. Museum of Art, Great Falls, MT Feb. 20, 2004-Mar 20, 2004
The Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury April 06, 2004- August 04
Hearst Art Gallery, Moraga, CA September 01, 2004 - October 20, 2004
Loveland Museum and Gallery, Loveland, CO. Nov. 10, 2004 – February,05
The Art Museum of SE Texas in Beaumont, TX June, 2005 - August,14, 2005
2001
Mark Woolley Gallery, Portland, OR “Anne Grgich 2001”(solo exhibition)
Yard Dog Gallery, Austin, and TX “Anne Grgich, Paintings” (solo exhibition)
Garde Rail Gallery, Seattle, WA “Paintings/Books”(solo exhibition)
TAG Gallery, Nashville, TN “Sibling Rivalry: The Art of Brother and Sister”
Modern Primitive Gallery, Atlanta, GA “Anne Grgich/Terry Turrel
2001-2002
Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma WA “Smithsonian Folk Art Collection”
Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, France “Noir Sur Blanc: Mondes Intérieur
2000
Elisa Pritzker Gallery, New Paltz, NY “Self-Taught Masters” (group exhibition)
American Pie Art, Wilmington, NC “ Group Exhibition”
MIA Gallery, Seattle, WA “Straight from the Heart” (group exhibition)
Katonah Library, Katonah, NY “The Hand Connected to the I”
1999
America, Oh Yes! Washington, DC, “American Folk Artists” (group exhibition)
1998
Grover/Thurston Gallery, Seattle, WA “Recent Paintings” (solo exhibition)
Sailors Valentine Gallery, Nantucket, MA “Recent Paintings”
1997
Fassbinder Gallery, Chicago, IL (group exhibition)
Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA “Ex Libris” (group exhibition)
MIA Gallery, Seattle WA “So Long Salon” Mia McEldowney / final exhibition
1996
MIA Gallery, Seattle, WA “In Search of Absence” (solo exhibition)
American Primitive Gallery, NYC “NW Visions” Anne Grgich, Terry Turrel, Calkins
Sheppard Art Gallery, Reno, NV “Memories and Visions” (group exhibition)
1995
Jamison/Thomas Gallery, Portland, OR “Tough Love” (solo exhibition)
Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA The “Illustrious Art of Books”
Society of Contemporary Arts and Crafts, Boston, MA “Social Fiber, Unraveling the Message”
Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA “Folie à Deux: Collaborative Teams”
1993
MIA Gallery, Seattle, WA “Heads or Tails” (group exhibition)
MIA Gallery, Seattle, WA “Northwest and Beyond” (group exhibition)
Jamison/Thomas Gallery, Portland, OR “Mind Screens” (two person exhibition)
1990
Gallery A, NYC “Curated by Rachel Kind” (group exhibition)
1989
Gallery 163, Seattle WA “Female Figures of the Ages” (solo exhibition)
1987-1988
Whatcom County Art Museum, Bellingham, WA “NW Annual Competition”
Alonso/Sullivan Gallery, Seattle WA “Two Artists” (Anne Grgich & Jose Isquierdo”
1981
Friction Gallery, Group Book Show, Portland, Oregon, ‘8’ Books

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Raw Vision Source Guide, 2007 Edition, feature in the Raw Classic section
• Raw Vision Magazine, Fall 2006 Issue, Full Page Internal Guidance Sysytems review by Eliza Murphy.
• Museum Création Franche, March 2005, Issue #24 “Life pulsating, troubled, exalting —work by Anne Marie Grgich” by Colin Rhodes
•Divine Messages, 2005, 30 Page Catalogue with Colin Rhodes, Robert Ball
•Preview, The Gallery Guide, (magazine/Online) Alberta-British Columbia-Oregon-Washington, June/July/August 2004 Full Page review on “Miniatures”
•Tom Patterson,“Art Along the Boundaries” An appraisal of the liminal artists working on the boundaries of Outsider Art, (color image from “The Palimpsest Book” ) 1998 Raw Vision Magazine issue 46 2004
•Raw News,“The Red Odessa at Garde Rail Gallery” Raw Vision Magazine issue
•Professor Colin Rhodes, Attending to the work of Anny Servais; catalogue for exhibition at The Mad Museum, France, 2004
•”Self Portrait”, written by Anne Grgich Artesian Arts, Edinburgh Scotland, UK 04
•Internal Guidance Systems,(USA Tour 2006-2008)Forthcoming International touring exhibition of Outsider Art Initiated and organized by Anne Grgich, Co-Curating with Colin Rhodes. (Prospectus written by Paul Gasoi/Anne Grgich Artesian Arts, 2004)
•The Goddessa Variety, illustrated by Anne Grgich, Artesian Arts, 2004
•Revelations and Reflections of American Self-Taught Artists, Exhibits USA Catalogue. 2002-2005 Still Life Giving, a Journey into Outsider Art, Documentary.
•Albert Jen: Toys as Art at Garde Rail, South Seattle Star. 2002.
•Noir Sur Blanc Catalogue 2001-2002 Damian Michaels, Martine Lusardy, Director/Curator, Halle Saint Pierre, Noir sur Blanc: Mondes Intérieurs. Paris: Travioles/Halle Saint-Pierre, 2001.
•Raw Vision Outsider Art Source Book, The Essential Guide to Outsider Art, Art Brut, Contemporary Folk Art
•Sellen, Betty-Carol, with Cynthia J. Johanson. Self-Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art: A Guide to American Artists, Locations and Resources. Jefferson: McFarland & Co. 2000.
•Gonnella, Rose.“The Books of Anne Grgich.” Raw Vision [cover story]. No. 22, Spring, 1998.
•Cohen, Lita Solis:“New York City, Outsider Art Fair” Maine Antique Digest. 1998
•Gonnella, Rose.“A Connection with Faces.” Arts Net. Spring 1997.
•Smith, Roberta.“Outsider Art Review.” New York Times. January 24, 1997
•Patterson, Tom. Catalogue MIA Gallery, Seattle, WA 1996.
•DeForest, Chase. “Grgich” Folk Art Finder, Vol. 17. No.3, July-September, 1996.
•Gillis, Cydney.“Outsider Looking In.”The Stranger. September 12, 1996.
•Grossman, Bonnie. Memories and Visions: Self-Taught and Outsider Artists West of the Rockies, Reno Univ. of Nevada, 1996.
•Rosenak, Chuck & Jan. Contemporary American Folk Art: A Collector’s Guide. NYC: Abbeville Press, 1996
•Patterson, Tom.“Bandwagon Reactionaries and Barricade Defenders.” New Art Examiner. September 1994.

GRANTS/SCHOLARSHIPS/AWARDS/POSITIONS

2003-2008
Internal Guidance Systems-Creator and co-curator and organizer of world visionary art tour with Professor Colin Rhodes,
2005-2006
Arts Corp, Staff Art Teacher
The Peanut Gallery, Executive Director and Curator starting in October
2003
Raw Visions, group Owner/ Moderator for discussion, on outsider and contemporary art.
Office of Cultural Affairs, Grant with SPACE Sand Point Way/Teen Art Project: Book Arts
Office of Cultural Affairs, Grant with SPACE Sand Point Way/Teen Art Project: Sculptural Puzzle/Technography
Selected for the Inclusion in the Washington State Arts Commission Competition for the “Artists Resource Bank” Art in Public Places Program, Truman High School.
2001 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Emergency Assistance Grant, NYC Artists’ Fellowship Inc. Emergency Assistance Grant, USA
1987 Cornish College of the Arts, One Semester, Scholarship, Seattle, WA

SELECTED PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, France, Museum Création Franche, Bègles, France Professor Jeffrey Hayes, Milwaukee WI. Katherine Dunn, Portland, Oregon Anthony Petullo Collection, Milwaukee WI, xMartine Lusardy, Paris France Mose Toliver, Birmingham, AL. Professor Colin Rhodes, UK. Manuel Isquierdo Estate, Portland, Oregon. Smithsonian Folk Art Registry. Virginia The Chuck and Jan Rosenak Collection, Florida, Henry Boxer, UK, The London Art Museum, Outsider Archives, UK, Tom Cramer, Portland, Oregon, Katherine Dunn, Portland, Oregon, Tom Patterson, Winston, Salem, NC, Mia McEldowney, USA, Whiting Tennis, Seattle, WA, Fay Jones, Seattle, WA. Meg Shiffler, NYC, George Chacona, Seattle, Washington. Gordon Gilkey Estate, Portland, Oregon, Mike Brophy, Portland Oregon, Don Ellegood Estate, Seattle Washington, Eve Cohen, Seattle, Washington, Juan Alonso, Seattle, Washington, John and Maggie Maizels, UK, Rachel Kind, NYC, Steve & Dolly Hessler, Washington DC, The Fussfelds, Ann Arbor Michigan, Nesta Spink, Ann Arbor, MI, Aarne Anton, NYC. Max Ammann, Switzerland