Gregg Blasdel

Gregg Blasdel, Burlington, VT, died June 6, 2024. An artist, educator, researcher, curator, collector, culinary wiz and avid cyclist, Greg was a Saint Michael’s College emeritus professor of art for many years.

Gregg was born in Kansas, where, in his hometown of Belle Plaine, he discovered his first self-taught art environment by David Rousseau. This would shape his career as an artist, researcher and educator. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and his Master of Fine Art degree in sculpture and painting from Cornell University.

He was a pioneer and among the most important and committed documentarians of artist-built environments by self-taught artists. In 1968 he published his seminal article “Grass-Roots Artist” in Art in America magazine, which played a pivotal role in bringing the creations of idiosyncratic, self-taught artists to the public’s attention. After receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he packed up his VW van and drove 15,000 miles around the U.S. with his friend and research assistant, Nick DeFriez, meeting and documenting artists and their work with a camera and a tape recorder. With the same curiosity and commitment, he taught at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the University of Vermont, Saint Michael’s and Burlington City Arts.

He moved to Burlington in 1974, to finish a book on Clarence Schmidt with his coauthor, Bill Lipke. He fell in love with Vermont. It was here that he left his mark on the art community through his commitment to his students and the work that he produced.

Gregg lived his art every day, whether he was making a print, building a stone wall, doodling, object-making, balancing rocks or cooking dinner. After Gregg was diagnosed with cancer, he started making a series of abstract percussive rattles he called, “Life and Death Rattles.” He found the sound and the act of rattling therapeutic; this was another example of how art was reflected in his life.

He is survived by his wife, Jennifer Koch ’89, and by two sons, a daughter, three brothers and extended family.