A Lifetime’s Work

Nov. 23, 2014

Not many artists spend half a century working on a single project.

But not many are as persistent and determined as Maple City’s Jerry Gretzinger.

Gretzinger has created a massive map of an imaginary landscape that exists only in his mind. It’s an elaborate work of more than 3,200 pages, 8 inches by 10 inches each, which stretches out to a mammoth 50-by- 50-foot size when fully displayed.

And it all began out of boredom back in 1963.

"The map began as just a doodle," recalls Gretzinger. "I just made a little rectangle and crosshatched it carefully. And I just kept adding more rectangles, and I put a river in and some railroad stations, but there was this moment when I came to the edge of that sheet of paper and got out another sheet of paper and I put the two together"¦that’s when I realized that it kind of had a life of its own."

Every day, in 20- or 30-minute sessions, Gretzinger expands Jerry’s Map, as the project has become known on the Internet. Jerry’s Map has even been showcased in a documentary available on Vimeo. He’s added farmlands, airports, capitol buildings, cemeteries and more, diligently constructing an entire civilization. He catalogues each page in a carbon copy archive and also on a computerized spreadsheet with the help of Suttons Bay resident, Tyler Shumway.

HOW I GOT STARTED

As a kid growing up outside Grand Rapids, I always loved maps. I collected free oil company maps of the states. I played with them, drew on them and traced highways coast to coast.

THE STORY BEHIND MY ART, MY INSPIRATION

In the summer of 1963, I had a very boring job monitoring the bearing parts machines at a company in Ann Arbor. In my spare time, I began drawing a map. And I have never stopped.

In the 1980s, it began to be more abstract and I began to consider it art. As the project grew over the years, I created an intricate deck of 114 cards that I use to expand the map. Using these custom-made cards, I take one off the top of the stack and it randomly determines, for example, whether commercial real estate will be inserted into green space, and other rules. One card says "Shuffle Deck."

It’s a new world for me. My hand puts the paint on the paper and then I stand back and say "˜Wow,’ as if I am not the perpetrator. I’m just the observer.

WORK I’M MOST PROUD OF

The Map–and my four children.

YOU WON’T BELIEVE

That, for 20 years, The Map languished in the attic of our home in Cold Spring, New York. My son, Henry, found it early in 2003. He brought it down and asked what it was and if he could have it. Also, that in the early 1960s, I spent time in the Peace Corps in Tunisia. I enjoyed it so much that I returned later and lived there for four and a half years. I also lived in New York City for 17 years and upstate in Cold Spring for 22 years, but I never considered myself "˜a New Yorker.’ I never stopped being a U of M fan, a Tigers fan.

MY FAVORITE ARTIST

Matisse. His work speaks to me, there’s something there. I just saw the show of his cut paper works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

ADVICE FOR ASPIRING YOUNG ARTISTS

Keep at it! Do it for yourself. Don’t worry about your audience.

MY WORK CAN BE SEEN/PURCHASED

On eBay there is a great selection of prints done by Vada Color in Traverse City and also some originals. The Map has been shown in Edinburgh Scotland and twice at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. It will also be displayed at the Oliver Art Center in Frankfort in February and March.