The Studio
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, my husband and I moved to the suburbs and closer to the school where I was teaching. In our new home, I set up a metalsmithing studio in the basement and fully intended to spend my free time there making jewelry and metalwork.
Then I became a mom.
Like so many new mothers, I quickly realized that the version of creativity I had built my life around no longer fit into the rhythms of my days. I was constantly with my daughter, and by the time she was asleep at night I was usually too exhausted to head downstairs to a studio that required setup, focus, and long stretches of uninterrupted time.
But the need to create never went away.
Instead, I started sitting on the floor at our coffee table at night cutting paper and making small collages. What started as a way to keep my hands busy at night slowly grew into something that I craved. It was also something that fit well into my new mom schedule, that I could pick up for five minutes or fifty without needing to fully enter and exit a studio practice.
As my daughter got older we started making art together: finger painting, coloring, experimenting, and creating just for the joy of it. I became completely captivated by the gestural, expressive marks she made and the total freedom with which she worked. After years of art school and formal training, where I had learned all the rules, here was this tiny person creating without any awareness of them. She painted with both hands, used her entire body, and approached materials with pure instinct and curiosity. Her creativity felt like lightning in a bottle.
I saved everything.
Eventually, like many parents, I found myself with stacks and stacks of artwork I couldn't bear to part with. One day, almost on impulse, I cut up one of her pieces and turned it into a collage.
That was the beginning of Archive House.
As I kept creating these collages, I realized I had stumbled into solving a problem so many parents share: the deep desire to preserve their children's work without storing endless bins of paper in a basement or attic. Many of us are now inheriting our own childhood artwork from parents who lovingly saved everything, but no longer want to keep it themselves.
Archive House transforms those piles of meaningful, but impractical keepsakes into custom fine art that can actually be lived with, displayed, and treasured. Instead of being hidden away in storage, these memories become part of your home and your story.
— Gretchen
Practice
The work begins with editing. Archive House collages aren't a stack of artwork glued down to a canvas. They're a curation, and curation requires options. When I receive a family's archive, I'm looking for the pieces that carry the most character: handwriting practice, colored-on kids' menus, the page where a child mixed every color in their set without intending to make a painting, doodles from a lined notebook. The polished pieces are great, but often tell less of a story than the things created when no one is looking.
For this reason, I always encourage families to send more than they think they need. In this case, more is more. A larger archive allows me to edit with intention, building a cohesive composition, refining the color palette, and creating a piece that feels considered and balanced rather than crowded or chaotic. Not every piece will make it into the final work, and that selectivity is an essential part of the process.
The work that does make it into the final composition is mounted directly onto birch panel, and the finished collage is sealed with a UV-resistant varnish so it can be lived with for decades. The pieces that don't make the final cut are carefully returned to the family.
Background
Gretchen Schreiber holds a BFA in Metal from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and both an MFA in Metalwork, Jewelry Design, and Digital Fabrication and a Master of Science in Art Education from Northern Illinois University. She is a licensed art educator and has taught studio art to students from the fifth grade through college, including at Downers Grove South High School and Northern Illinois University.
Her own work has been exhibited in galleries across Chicago and nationally. Recent shows include the 2026 Salon Show at Purple Window Gallery (Chicago) and Radical Jewelry Makeover at Gallery 2052 (2024).
The studio is in Hinsdale, IL.