Gary John Gresl

Gary John Gresl has a long and fruitful career as an artist, educator, arts advocate, and antique appraiser. He has dedicated much of his life to promoting the arts and artists of Wisconsin. Gresl is a Mary Nohl Artist Fellow, and a recipient of the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award, which he was instrumental in establishing. His work is exhibited widely within the region, including the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Ploch Art Gallery of the Wilson Arts Center, and the Institute of Visual Arts (INOVA) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He recently spent a year as artist-in-residence at the Lyndon Sculpture Garden in Milwaukee where he developed projects about entropy and physical objects.

Gresl’s experience as an antiques dealer and appraiser has informed the way he assembles his sculptures and the way he studies cultural objects. His work questions their inherent symbolism and relationship to each other when juxtaposed within a composition. While he was an Arts/Industry artist, Gresl slip-cast vitreous china found objects and incorporated them into his compositions in order to compare and contrast new and old, reproduction and original.