Pride Month - Meet Glazer's Staff: Genevieve Gaudreau

Our team is filled with a broad spectrum of creatives with unique voices, stories and perspectives. As we continue to highlight artists in the LGBTQIA+ Community, we are excited to highlight our Shipping Manager, Genevieve Gaudreau. 

ABOUT GENEVIEVE GAUDREAU

Genevieve Gaudreau was born in 1992 and grew up in Wichita, Kansas. In 2011 she moved to La Grande, Oregon to attend Eastern Oregon University where she received her BS in art in 2016. She has exhibited work throughout the Pacific Northwest. Genevieve is now working and living in Seattle, WA.

 

INTERVIEW

Genevieve and I sat down for a chat about her work, her process and the story behind why she creates what she creates. 

KH: Tell me a bit about you, I know you went to art school, what set you on the path of art?

GG: I went to college for creative writing, took a print-making class in my sophomore year, and decided to change majors. I also double majored in history.

 

KH: In looking at your work it looks like a blend of found pieces that you are adding or subtracting elements. Can you share a bit of your inspiration behind the work?

GG: My current body of work touches on themes of identity, loss, grief, motherhood, and the passing of time, a lot of what I have been experiencing collectively in the last 5 years. Primarily I have been more interested in found imagery and manipulating that imagery into something different and new. 

KH: Could you talk a bit about your process?

GG: I am mostly using tape and layering to create my work. A lot of it has to do with responding to found imagery, and essentially having my own conversation with the work. Often when I am working, I work very intuitively and then I tend to analyze my work from a conceptual place after. I am always thinking of what it means to be making the work I am making, but I think it's easier for me to respond naturally and then assess after the work is done. 

 

 

KH: Let's shift to the photographic process, you're working in film and digital. I heard you take a Hassy out of rentals from time to time?

GG: I have always been interested in film when it comes to photography. I recently purchased a 500cm Hasselblad, after using the 501c that the rental department has available. I think for me, my interest in photography is closely related to my interest in collage. The idea of capturing and documenting things I think feel really important to me as an artist and just as a person. 

I have also been shooting digitally with my Fujifilm XT-3, which has been a new way of working in the studio for me in general. This has been a bit of a reprieve from a lot of the content I've been addressing in my collage work. I think it has been important for me to touch on different forms of medium in the studio, and different ways of approaching the same content in a visually different way.

KH: What is your next project?

GG: In 2023 I'm going to be in part of a show at SOIL in Pioneer Square.

KH: Have you gone back to the writing at all?

GG: Yes, I write all of the time. I've been writing a lot about my experience with the loss of my mom this last April. It's a much more honest way of working for me, and I think through documenting that experience it's been important through my process of grief. My next project has to do with publishing some of that writing, and sharing that grief with other people who may feel isolated within their own experience. 

Check out more of Genevieve's work on her website: Genevieve Gaudreau or follow her on Instagram: @genevievegaudreaustudio.