Patti Gibbons Art

I have not written in a few days. Just too busy and I guess my monster entry gave me my fix for a few days. Thanks Judy for the compliment on the art - it is pretty scary, but man, did I love the process of doing it and putting it out there. I think it helps let out the demons, and I KNOW there are a few readers out there who understand and can relate to the metaphors and symbolism. I have had criticism from a few people (out of love and kindness, not out of malice) for putting some of my inner soul out on the table of words. I know the reality of the internet, the super highway of all the data you could ever hope to find on people. You can't run, you can't hide. But I also know that you can't believe everything you read either, so who's to say I am nothing more than an interesting fiction writer. My most intense blogs have been some of the most enjoyed, and at times most controversial. I know I can be dark, but there is plenty of light to balance it out. But than...

The dream that I awoke to set the stage for the day. It so inspired and stuck with me that I had to make the artwork for tonight's entry from a photo of myself. Nothing like making me look like a Goth version of The Scream. Could I make myself uglier....Peg will want to see this. The 6 AM alarm woke me from a dream that was taking on terrifying proportions. There was a monster, a horrid monster in a wooden crate which was bound up with ropes. It had big teeth, and the skin of a burn victim from a war. My children started making noise, and the monster awoke, scrambling about in the box. I tried to quiet them as I knew the ropes could only contain this flesh and soul eating monster for a short time before it broke loose and devoured us all. Sounds like some Stephen King novel, but I bought it with me to my Jungian therapist whom I am in total awe of. She explained that the dream represented both people in my life -- and myself. My living in fear for 30 years from two men who ...

After a long day, a good workout, a bite to eat, I went home to work for a bit, then headed to the attic to look for old photos of myself as a child and teen. I wanted to write an article about high schools days, probably prompted by my recent viewing of the movie Juno and those constant emails about "THREE PEOPLE HAVE SEARCHED FOR YOU ON HIGH SCHOOL REUNION.COM. I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw how many bookcases and how much ephemera that Larry has shoved into every nook and cranny in the attic. I was beginning to feel like I was married to one of the Collyer Brothers. I fear that the floor will collapse under the weight of all the paper, and we shall die in bed killed by a ton of books. I found one photo album, the part of my life that was one of the most awful times.I felt sad while I paged through it, remembering how heartbroken and traumatized I was, while trying to make a happy life for my little children. But that was not the book I wanted, nor was there enough lig...

REMINDER...valentine's day is coming and I have some lovely cards for your loved ones on Etsy. I have many more here that I have not listed, but peruse my site from time to time to see what I am up to. Tonight's cards are new items I listed this morning BEFORE I took a break and...went to the old Granite Hotel to spend a day at their spa, which is now the Hudson Valley Resort in Accord, NY. Smack in the middle of farm country, tucked back in the back roads of Ulster County, it is one of the several surviving Catskill Mountain resorts. The Catskills were a haven to resorts in the latter 1800's, such as the Catskill and Overlook Mountain houses which have long burned down. After the depression, the hotel businesses took a nosedive, and it probably wasn't until the 60's or so that the Nevele Hotel, the Granite, the Homowack (yikes, what a name!)were hip places to go in the Borscht Belt of the Catskill Mountains. An easy drive from the city, a perfect mountain get away....

I have taken a hiatus from writing for a few days, and wishing I could take a hiatus from life too, but in the spare moments that I have when I am not dealing with life/house/family/ I go on mini-vacations, even if in my own studio, or my own head.Or, a movie--that is my most favorite place to take a trip away from reality for a few hours. The trippier, the better, LOL. I have spent a few blocks of time in the past days to work in the studio, mostly in production making cards. It is a lovely space with a great music set up, and I am surrounded by my artwork and things that I love. Candles, scents, altars, odd collectibles, paints. I received some new paper and photographs which I bought on eBay, which is always exciting and inspiring as it gives me a jump start on ideas and designs. Larry and I grabbed a date together tonight as I lamented that I go out with everyone except him, so at the last moment we grabbed our coats and headed to the Rosendale Cafe for dinner. I have eaten at the...

Driving home tonight was dark and cold. I had gone to the movies with a friend to watch Juno....and I had much to think about on the quiet drive home alone. It has been a pensive 24 hours. Therapy that rocked my world last night, and let loose a torrent of tears that have been saved for 20 years. A friend's family lost a four month old baby. A student of mine lost their two year old cousin who had lived with them in a house fire. I felt like the world was a series of earthquakes rocking all of our lives. While I was buried in my thoughts, a Cold Play song came on... Lights will guide you home and ignite you bones and I will fix you. I thanked the universe for my therapist, for my husband, for my art---they all fix me. And in turn I try and be the light for others, and fix them. I did take the day off. I had a headache, was tired, burnt, worn out, and needed renewal and rest. I have taken very few days off work, and I really needed a day to center myself and gather strengt...

My friend Liz has a blog called Life as an Artist in Woodstock. I put the link on my Catskillpaper blog. You should stop by and check it out, and read the entry on SECRETLY CREEPY. The site contains weird photos that were found on ebay. I have a few that I should submit, including the photo I posted on tonight's blog. I took it a few summers ago when I was selling a collection of dolls for a friend on eBay. Alanna is in the background, about 8 months or so, rolling around. I have some fun photos which I kept as they were so cool..both the dolls and the photos. So I leave you here with this image...I should have a writing contest based on it. The places we could go. Till tomorrow, Patti O Dolly

I am sitting here in my back room, bundled up in layers. My computer room is surrounded by french windows which is chilly in the bitter cold of winter, and steamy in the hottest days of summer, but oh what a room full of light and comfort it is most other times. I am sipping on red wine, and eating handmade chocolates, listening to a music mix I made for Megan. I am alone, Larry is gone for the evening, and I am enjoying the solitude and peace. After all the sadness and emotional turmoil of the last month, it feels wonderful to say that I had a GREAT day today being a student instead of being a teacher. I was excited...1)that I did not have to go into school and teach (it is regents week anyway, and I would just be cleaning and grading, and 2) that I was going to learn a program that I had always wanted to learn---- DREAMWEAVER. The reality is, I LOVE being a student. I love the challenge, the mental stimulation, and consider myself a life long learner. I can understand why some just s...

I had breakfast with Gary's family before they all headed back to California. It was a bittersweet departure, and they will be back as their mom's house needs some work and she needs some help disbanding Gary's things I am sure. I will visit Erna every few weeks and bring dinner as I know that when the dust settles, she will miss the son who made sure she was OK. I went home to work in the studio all afternoon. It was cold, and it took forever to heat up. I just got slammed with another heating bill and my hard earned art monies go to heating my studio..sometimes I wonder if I will EVER get ahead. I took the latter half of my day to go work out. I had been a runner, a racer in fact, an in line skater, skier, and tennis player, sometimes all at the same time. It has been 2 1/2 years since my accident that I have done anything besides physical therapy, and with the new year decided that I have pain whether or not I work out, so I may as well be in shape. I have had people com...

Larry and I went to the memorial yesterday. It was a beautiful celebration of Gary's life, and it was also the place where I finally let the tears flow, to the point where I could not turn them off. I don't cry much, at times I might be called stoic. I know where that comes from--as a child I was stripped and beaten with a belt and I would swear that I would NOT let my father see my cry. I stuffed the anger and the shame by doing things to hurt myself. I am over that now, but I still find it difficult to cry. On the way home I stopped to drop off some cards to my friend who had bought some Valentine cards from Etsy. She has a shop in Shokan on Route 28, the wonderful old building called THE BERRY PATCH. I have driven past it 100's of times and never stopped in. Well, what a treasure. Thousands of square feet of the most wonderful gifts. Candles, ornaments, angels, fairies, handmade beaded jewelry that is amazing, by Sherry, writing paper and inks/pens, candles, peace cranes...

Yesterday was busy with giving mid terms, then heading to Gary's family home to meet his sister Wendy (who was my best friend in High School) and his mom to make the photo board for the memorial tomorrow. I found out that Gary's obituary was in the Daily News yesterday, as well as the Woodstock Times and other local Hudson Valley Papers. He was known as Gary "The Z Man" Zoehfeld, as he was a local DJ for many years on WHUD, sometimes WDST, and other local northeast stations. He also worked in the Grand Union in Woodstock for years, and before his death at the one in Tannersville. He was a recording genius and music afficiando, and could be found taping the WDST sessions over the years. Gary had a wonderful sense of humor, was gentle, kind, and lived life to its fullest right up until the end. Rest in peace Gary, and may your heaven be filled with music and good times. We miss you.

I travel some pretty steep windy roads on the way to work as they are shortcuts. For 16 years I have been figuring out the quickest routes to work, and have had to alter them many times when construction crews muck up the highways and shave precious time off my carefully planned trip to work... When the weather is too bad I stick to the main roads, but I usually take the back way as it is scenic with little traffic. The roads wind along creeks, between steep hills where the highway department has not quite figured out how to direct the flow of water that cascades from the rain, or from the periodic thaws. Here in the Catskills, the temperatures can range from several degrees below zero, to a warm 55. With the recent thaw and temps above freezing, there has been much melting of the huge snow banks along the road. Often the early morning temperatures are below freezing, making the puddles formed by day into long runways of ice. It never ceases to amaze me that people drive well over the...

I wrote an entire blog, hit some @#$@#@##@@ button and it zoomed off the screen into the big void of lost words. I am too tired to rewrite it. So you will have to wait for another evening when I will rewrite the story about cats and pinatas and cats in bustiers. Damn keyboard.

I don't have much energy. I have been gone from my house for 12 plus hours, taught all day, gone to the gym, then met my mixed media MASTER friend Annie Barr for a bite to eat. I wasn't going to write a blog, as I am so tired and don't have much energy left to think or write. I am PMS'd to the max (at least I assume that is what it is) and am not sure whether I am digging or hating the Patti Smith CD that Larry is playing in the background. Then I visited my friend Judy Var's blog, CABIN FEVER IN ALASKA and I knew that I had something to write about---her. I am not sure how she found my blog, but the universe hooked us up and we have become friends across the great wide US of A... I love her energy, her art, her thoughts,and her musings. She is talented, honest, and I have watched her grow in leaps and bounds. I am sure we have been sisters in this universe at one point in time, and if we ever meet I think we will have the grandest of times. I love her, and I have ...

I have a headache. I don't know if it is the effect of the pressure from the storm coming in, or my hormones, or both. I am out of my migraine medication, so a stint in bed for a while was in order this afternoon after I made a pot of veggie soup big enough to feed our neighborhood. It is a recipe from the Soup Bible, a book I bought in Barnes and Noble. I have had it for a year, and figured that each week I will try a new soup. (and it is a very very thick book!) I visited Gary's mom today, and we went through photos of him so that we can make a board for the memorial next weekend. I am also going to make the cards for service, which I had done for my friend Julie's mom. I am not big on flowers at such services, and would rather provide my artistic talents as my contribution to him and his family. I have been keeping busy, working in the studio, and on my two websites, trying to figure out how to design them, and how to upload them to my web space. So far, I am not doing t...

Yesterday was one of the longest fridays I have had. I started the day without coffee, and headed into school, teaching through a day that dragged on F O R E V E R. I think the week was so long as it was the first full week after the winter vacation, which was NO vacation for me. I am feeling a day to myself looming in the horizon, where I head up to Mohonk, bask in the beauty of the mountains, maybe do some cross-country skiing if my foot body can take it (I have been slowly working out at the gym and my body is not happy) and ending the day with a massage, a sauna, and a hot mineral bath. I checked my cell phone messages. Gary died a few hours before. I heading to my massage, and felt numb- I could not cry. I decided to wait to call the family until after I had the massage as I needed to get centered and be relaxed before I made the difficult calls. On the way to my masseuse, I put on my Ipod which I have hooked into the tape deck of my CRV. Out of 500+ songs, (I had it on shuffle), ...

I am sitting here in the pre-dawn hours, tired, and sipping on chamomile and vanilla tea. There is no milk in the house, and I hate black coffee, so I decided to forgo the coffee and drink tea...only thing is, this tea very well may put me back to the zone of sleep! This week has been in incredibly busy...my blogs have been minimal, though my mind is crammed full of thoughts and stories. This morning there is no time to write, but I did want to share this "Note from the Universe". "A master's awareness of spiritual laws, directs him or her to manifest major life changes by working with their thoughts, not by working harder. Which isn't to say they don't sometimes work very long hours, because they do; they just don't think of it as work. Which also isn't to say that they all have cool jobs that anyone would love, because they don't; they just see every task before them, no matter where they work, as a gift to unwrap." BINGO. For those of you ...

Some of you know that I run a few blogs....maybe many of you. But, for those of you who don't, and are interested in my musings in relation to art, stop on by Catskill Paper once in a while. I don't post every day. It is difficult enough to find the time AND the energy to post on this one every day, never mind two blogs. But I have been posting whatever art finds its way to my sun room where my computer resides. I post about marketing, inspiration, faith, rejection, whatever topic my art life inspires. I made the banner in photoshop----it is my Etsy banner. I love the double entendre of my blog's name, and found a great antique chromolithograph card from the late 1800's. In a flash of inspiration, I checked to see if CATSKILLPAPER.COM was available as a domain....and IT WAS! So, for 10.00 for the year, I have purchased the domain!Oh boy, another website...I see it now. Just devoted to cat ephemera and cat cards. Donald Trump, here I come. Chuckling on my way to dre...

The title of tonight's blog sounds like the name of a book my father would have had in his library of books, and if my father had lived long enough it WOULD have been in his library. It was published much later however, and it is about Watergate and Nixon. AH, my father, being the staunch Republican that he was, would have indeed had the book. I remember some of the books he had in that bookcase...Airline Safety is a Myth, books on the death of Kennedy. William Buckley was his hero....I wonder what he would have thought of Bush?! I am getting off topic here. What I am referring to is my visit to Gary's tonight. He is fading...and though he still knows we are there, he is barely responding. He enjoys our conversation however, and how we rub his feet, hold his hands, and give him love. I cried on the way up to see him...and fear it will be the last time. It has been a journey, this dalliance with death. I have avoided it my whole life, but now I am trying to be the best nurse and...

Oh the people at Honda hate me when I come in to get my car fixed! Why? Because I ask questions and make them look things up to make sure that we are on the same page. Long story, I won't get into it, but the moral of the story is...always check online to see if ANY of the problems you are having with your car have recalls or bulletins put out on it, and make SURE that it isn't covered under warranty. I don't think car places like smart women. I also got my music order and FINALLY have some new music to listen to. A Few Small Repairs by Shawn Colvin, the new KT Tunstall CD, and choral music sung in the Sistine Chapel. Am heading upstairs right now to relax to that one. A few cute photos of my student's pit bull puppies. How sweet are they?!!!! REMEMBER TO PLAY. Patti

The title of the blog refers to the movie I saw tonight, not to my brief 20 seconds of fame on the wall of a gallery, though I am honored to be hanging on the the same gallery as photos by great artists such as Keith Carter. The opening was packed, lots of people checking out both Isis's work, and the other fabulous photographers in the BMG Gallery . The gallery was in fact at one time a gallery called Photofind, run by Howard Greenburg, who has one of the biggest photography galleries and collections in NYC. No one purchased me, alas, but I have a copy of the infamous photo which I am going to mat and frame and put next to the Ruth Bernhard over my bed. Afterwards an after show party attended by an array of interesting people and foods. Yet though I have no claim to fame, and am a small town artist with giant ideas, I am content to be able to do what I do, and bask in the fabulous friends that I have met along the way. I love Larry's joke about people being "legends in t...

I just got back from my Saturday morning running around. I have been so busy and exhausted that I did not get out of bed till 9, and have been busy handling business, cleaning, and am heading out to the studio for a bit before I have to head out to an opening. Early in the spring I participated in a Pin Up Girl workshop with friend and photographer Charise Isis. To my surprise, she wanted to use one of the photographs in her show opening tonight in Woodstock, New York, called The Boudoir Project. I was honored to grace a photography gallery's walls, and be part of this project. For more information email me. It is at the BMG Gallery on 12 Tannery Brook Road in Woodstock, and the show runs from today through February 18th. Opening tonight from 5-7. Back to the focus of todays musings...As I was on line in the Post Office, I ran into an old acquaintance. I greeted her and asked her how she was doing. She told me how wonderfully well her children are doing in their lives, one is marri...

I just got in. It is 11 pm, I have an emergency dentist appointment first thing in the morning, then have another long day tomorrow. But I had to tell the part of the "shop class" story that I forgot last night. The class was lame. Figures that what went on behind closed doors with a bunch of teenage boys and a teacher named Mr. Moses WOULD be lame. (though I have to say the teacher was very patient, and very very kind to me, even when I created a disturbance in the room because they boys were giving me such a hard time and I gave it right back) The projects?! Learning how to make pads of paper (the only reason why I liked that is I could make mini sketchpads for myself), potholders (I already KNEW how to do those, and I was sick of having to help the guys do the hard part of finishing them off), making little statues out of slip molds (didn't I do that in summer crafts camp?) and model airplanes. Remember, I made at least one or more of everything that my brother made. ...

It all started with my Leatherman. No, back up. It all started when I was 19 years old.... NO. It really started when I was 14, but I suspect it was much earlier than that. I was the oldest in family of four, and it was a great disappointment that the eldest was a Patricia, not a Patrick. When my brother came along, I could see that he was soon to be crowned prince regent. I suspect it was due to sibling rivalry, and clamoring for the hope of a morsel of love and attention from my father that made me prove over and over again that I could throw any ball as well as my brother and I was always willing to play. Poor Jim, I even won all his baseball cards from him when we flipped in the neighborhood. (all those Mets cards I collected...) At 14 I announced to my parents and to my school, that I wanted to take Shop Class. In the early 70's, shop was for boys, and home EC was for girls. I had art, home EC, and wondered what lay behind those doors in the basement of my High School, a plac...

A big difference from a year ago last night. Last year on New Year's Eve I was dancing the night away to great dance music in tight black leather pants and a velvet bodice. This year I was bundled up in loose comfy almost pajama-like velvets at that same friend's house that had the dance party last year, and was miserable as I had the most awful of stomach aches. A few bottles of champagne sat in front of me and I could not bear to think about drinking. Something was not right. We left before midnight, and in between my moans we kissed in the car when 12:00 struck on the digital clock in my trusty Honda. When we got home, I grabbed the heating pad, and Larry and I made the best of the evening, considering I was sick for hours. Food poisoning? Too many cookies? Pork? I awoke to another 4-6" of snow. We had 2 parties to go to. Somewhere around 3PM we dug out and went to celebrate the New Year. I was a bit tenuous when it came to eating and drinking, but I slowly eased myself...