Gretchen Cawthon

Gretchen has a long history of breaking gender stereotypes. Growing up in a small town in Illinois, she was often the only girl on the baseball and basketball teams. She was also the only female percussionist in her first few years of college.

She received her first LEGO set (#111) at the age of 3 and has been building ever since. Some of her favorite MOCs are puzzles, like her Rubik’s snake, and brick sketches like Wednesday Addams. She also enjoys building small animals and fun shapes, like the Ghost emoji.

Her work has been displayed at Brick World in Chicago, Brick Rodeo in Sugar Land, TX, and locally at art galleries.

Gretchen lives by minimalist principles, although she does maintain a walk-in closet full of bricks. Her goal is to keep a basic inventory and source what she needs when she needs it. She is fortunate enough to live in an area where LEGO stores are everywhere and there are lots of fellow AFOLs nearby willing to trade.

Having a background in computers and web design, Gretchen is a wiz at building LEGO digitally in the Stud.io app. She typically creates her MOCs digitally before building them in real life and often shares instructions for her builds on her website at BrickGirl.art.

With a passion for helping women achieve their dreams, Gretchen built the Girls Can’t WHAT? website in 2005.  She is also the founder and lead strategist at her branding agency, Left Right Labs, and often makes her client’s logo out of LEGO as a thank-you gift.

Gretchen joined the Women’s Brick Initiative in July 2023 to handle all things web and tech. She designed, developed, and continues to maintain the WBI website.