Associated with young artists of the 1980s who based their works on appropriated photographic sources--among them Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo and Richard Prince--Gretchen Bender produced socially conscious, mixed-media works, sometimes using multiple video monitors and film screens with loud music scores. Her first New York gallery show was at Nature Mode in the East Village in 1983; she later showed at Metro Pictures. She designed the credits for the TV show "America's Most Wanted" and directed music videos for Babes in Toyland, among others. She also designed sets for choreographers Bill T. Jones and Molissa Fenley. In 1991, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse mounted a traveling midcareer retrospective of her work. Gretchen Bender, 53, film and video artist, died in 2005 in New York.