Patti Gibbons Art

Strange Sunday. Started with fog, followed by hours of curriculum writing, as I had to have it done today so that I could get on that Trailways bus to NYC tomorrow morning and be done with it for a few days. Once I get on that bus, all thoughts of school will be VANQUISHED. As well as thoughts of most everything else. And believe me, there is a lot of stuff for me to digest in my life. I don't know how the planets were aligning, or not aligning, but it was not a day for relationships. At nearly 3 pm I craved some sunlight and some alone time, and headed to Karen's for some girl and sun time. Karen and I talked about what our ideal of nirvana would be, and how we could write our own novel about what a stint in heaven would be like. Heaven would look like this: We'd get to keep our men, but in their prime. We would also be in our prime. And tan. Their to-do list would always BE DONE. We wouldn't mind cooking as the recipe for what we wanted to make would miraculously ...

I can never say that I live an uninteresting life. It is usually a packed day, full of surprises; some good, some not so good. The not so good was a migraine that started slowly and softly, reaching a crescendo by late afternoon. Then there was the phone call from my aunt telling me that my other aunt, the sister of the auntie who just died, had a stroke and is in the hospital. The song "Another One Bites the Dust" plays wickedly in my head. "NOT YET" I shout to the little devil singing in my ear. Then I remembered one of the prayers at the funeral the other day:"may your soul reach heaven before the devil knows you're dead." As my mother would say: "right on". I had a date to meet a Facebook friend who kindly did my horoscope for me. I knew I should have taken a tape recorder with me, as there was so much to understand, and my brain could only hold so much of the info on the houses, planets, etc. A lot of it made sense, and I will study...

It's been a busy few days here. I was almost too tired to blog, but I wanted to post a few links here about keeping our animals fed as well as we can. One of my cats had rapid kidney failure which caused her untimely death - possibly accelerated by the food I was feeding her which contained fillers and chemicals which later were found to be extremely unhealthy. Fillers I believe, that were in foods processed in China. Thanks to my friend Marlaine, she posted a good link on pet food ingredients to avoid , and then I did some of my own research and found a great site which rated dry cat foods . No matter what animal you have, do a google search for a review of that animal's foods. Expensive does not always mean better, and cheap is usually just that, cheap. I keep my cats indoors in order to keep them safe from cars, disease, and insects, and other animals. But I did not realize that the food that the vet suggested we buy has fillers in it such as corn and rice, as well as chi...

Today was my aunt's mass and burial in the Catskills. It was a lovely day, the sun was shining, occasional clouds floated in the cerulean sky.The rain has made the vegetation a brilliant green, and the creek's reflections of blues and greens were vivid against the pale creek stones. I no longer attend mass, but the priest and the mass were lovely. He emanated joy and love of the Lord and his people, so unlike so many other priests I had encountered in my years of Catholic education. I liked that he quoted scripture from the Jews, and made a few references to what some might call "New Age Modern Philosophy". He was caring, kind, and personable. He made me smile. My brother spoke about my aunt so eloquently. It was a beautiful memorial to her, and for once, I did not stand up and add to the conversation. I wasn't sure where in the cemetery she was going to be buried, and it was next to my father's gravestone.....in a plot that had been purchased by the family...

Since I last posted, my studio has flooded twice. Friday's flood wasn't so bad; nothing that several towels and some time couldn't clean up, though I am trying to figure out how the earthworm got in. I started getting rid of art supplies that I did not need so that I could free up some space. I spent most of yesterday afternoon organizing and packaging. Today's downpour not only bought in water, but mud, which makes cleaning the studio even harder. I have had it with the rain, and with the poorly designed roads. The water races down a steep hill, makes a left into my neighbor's driveway which goes downhill and runs parallel to the back of my studio. The water fills up in this driveway about 6", then spills over the bank into the back of my studio. Today it bought down his mulch, and I got mud and silt into the studio. If there were storm drains before his driveway in a few places, I suspect that most of the water could be diverted. It could have been wors...

This might be another one of the books I want to write. How to Live on a Permanent Vacation, Even if you Have to Work, OR How to Feel Like You're Always on Valium, but You're Not. I talked this over with Annie/Loel today brainstorming ideas. Obviously one can't take off every weekend and go somewhere, especially if you are a middle class American. So you can start by bringing this into your home, making it a haven of peace and relaxation. I have the luxury of my children being out of the house, so I took one room, kept it as sparse as possible, and use it for my meditation room, surrounded by peaceful objects. A candle, a Buddhist scroll about being in the moment. A picture of Obama and the Dalai Lama. A sculpture. Some art. Cleaning my house is one thing I don't have time to do, and I HATE to do, so I am seriously thinking of giving up SOMETHING so that I can have my house cleaned every other week. Nothing like coming home to a clean space. Keep clutter to a mi...

I was supposed to go Plein Air painting yesterday with some friends, it being a French term meaning "open air", or simply painting outside, made popular by the Impressionists. Most art is made in the studio, and after having painted plein air, I understand why. You have to pack up your canvases, paints, and easel, find a place to paint, set up, and then endure the bugs, elements, sun, cold, heat, etc. Also, it is difficult to paint with anything but oils outside as acrylics dry too fast. And then you have to deal with the mess of oil paints and carrying a wet canvas home. I have no choice but to work small with my car, as the only safe place to put a wet canvas is in the trunk. Unless I take the CRV which has a lot of room and it on its 7 th year with me, so I am less concerned about a little paint here and there..... I diverge. Because of the heat wave here, we did not go paint. And I was glad for that decision.But I had blocked out the day, and decided that at leas...

Larry and I have come back into the unairconditioned house a dirty sweaty mess from pulling out all the beautiful tomato plants we had so lovingly nurtured the past two months. Two days before I left for the Cape, the plants developed the blight. I knew when I returned that they would be close to being destroyed, and about half of the plant, and 85% of the tomatoes succumbed to late season blight. "Be glad you are not a farmer whose livelihood depends upon his/her crops" Karen said. Still I was pissed and sad. I had not bought my plants at a box store. They had been raised in a greenhouse in school, and had the best soil. In retrospect, I may have planted them too close together, and next season only three or four plants will go into a raised bed, with lettuce or herbs planted around the edges. I had staked them, and mulched them, both of which are supposed to help prevent the blight. Oddly enough, the tomatoes in the other garden, a mere 10' or so away, the cherrie...

It is with bittersweet feelings that I have returned home. We were just getting to know the area, find places we liked to go to; there were so many places we never got to visit, so many things unexplored. Another week, and I would be really chilled out and feel like I had enough of a vacation. However, it is a reminder that I need down time in order to gear up for the demands of my life and my job, and that though I am not always working in the studio, I am always taking in the landscape and life's experiences to bring back with me for those long hours of art ahead. I spent my last full day going for a mid morning walk to breakfast, the path which leads through an old graveyard which was the final resting place for the Paine family of Thomas Paine lore. I took many photos, and studied the historical markers, the earlier ones bearing the traditional carvings of weeping willows and such. After a breakfast burrito, and the walk back home, I painted for a few hours, starting two mor...

I have been up since 6 am as I headed to bed to read at 9:30, and promptly got sleepy and nodded out. The sun is no where to be seen, though the forecast states that by 9 it will be sunny in Wellfleet. It has 4 minutes to create a miracle. It was the perfect day yesterday for Karen and I to head up to Truro to the Atlantic Spice Company , where we loaded up with herbs we bought in bulk by the pound. Bay leaves, hot curry powder, a huge bag of peppermint tea bags, herbs de Provence, oregano. When we get home we joked about having an "herb" party, splitting our treasures into smaller bags, perhaps making some bay sachets to keep those little bugs OUT of the pantry. We then stopped by my fave paper store..Jules Besch, where Karen bought the paper she was been craving for 2 years now, and I only bought one piece and a card. I am on austerity budget since there is no money in the art coffers, but I did get an idea on how to make some cards for my winter show. After it was an a...

The day was overcast. Not a beach day, but the perfect day to go into P-town. Not only I thought so, but apparently thousands of others. It was crowded beyond belief, and my introvert self kept saying GET OUT GET OUT. Shoulder to shoulder, being bumped off the sidewalk into the streets, maneuvering between people, bikes, and cars. But we were on a mission. One to visit owner Ronny Hazel of Shop Therapy fame, one of the famous two colorful shops of the town, the other to the Marine Specialties store to buy Larry a pair of Rafters at a deep discount. Shop Therapy is filled with tie dyed clothes, bags galore from exotic places like Bali and Nepal, and more, at fab prices. A trip upstairs will take you to the adult and "smoking" accessory shop. I should have taken photos, but I was overwhelmed by everything, and forgot. However, once at Marine Specialties, I took out my camera while Larry look for his sandals for treks. The store was PACKED and I had a difficult time fin...

Yesterday was a fabulous day. Not horribly hot and humid, but hot enough to swim. I have a hard time paying to swim....as who owns the ocean, but I realize that you pay to park, and the fees cover the maintenance of the parking lots and beaches, though at 15.00 a pop, I suspect the town coffers are quite full. You also can't get a three day or week pass/permit, unless you have a certificate of residency (which you can get for a week if you rent here) which prevents outsiders from coming in. It also keeps out those who can't afford to park, which leads me to another issue...the lack of "diversity". No Blacks, Latinos, Asian populations on this part of the Cape, save for the color of Provincetown. So, rather than pay to park, Larry and I have learned various ways to circumvent the fees. One, is to find a place to park, and walk to a beach. Two, is to go to the beach after 3:30, where permits are not usually checked. Still good swim time, and enough time to catch ...

The weather has been decent here....any clouds burning off by 11 am, and any clouds that have rolled in have done so by late afternoon. I have not done much, trying to live a low key life. Read. Primed 6+ canvases, doing a combo of cooking and eating out, visiting friends, walking. Small adventures. I am still fighting my colitis, so I am making a point of nurturing myself and moving slowly. Where I am staying is across the street from the bike/walking trail, it passes an old graveyard, and leads to a set of stores that have everything I need; food, clothing, booze, and homemade ice cream. All at a mere half mile walk, lined with phlox in bloom, some plants that I don't recognize that look like blueberry plants but with red berries, native Cape grasses, and poison ivy-lots of poison ivy. Because we are trying to keep expenses low, we have not bought a week long town or National Seashore permit, and are staying away from beaches that charge a 15.00 sticker fee. Yesterday we ga...

Am sitting in the huge sun room in this lovely old house that I have rented in Wellfleet , out on the Cape here in Massachusetts. It is cloudy, but I don't care as I have blogs to write, notes to take, movies to watch, books to read, and canvases to prime. The ride up was long as traffic was heavy; it took a good five hours to get here, and during that time I had a lot to process. Somewhere on the Taconic , about 45 minutes into my trip, I got a phone call from my cousin telling me that my Aunt had passed away. Though sad, I was relieved. She had been in a comatose state since Sunday, and it was time for her to leave her body behind. I did my good cry the other night, when I woke up from a series of horrible nightmares, and all the sadness that I felt just poured out of me and I cried uncontrollably for a very long time. I cried for my aunt, for a friend who is very ill with cancer, for all of the burdens I have so gracefully carried around without a tear. The only problem was...

Day #4. I need to try one of those new sleeping drugs that I have read about. The ones that just put you back to sleep when you wake up at 3 AM and can't take an Ambien because you need six more hours of sleep in order to take it. I don't like taking sleep meds, but I also don't like days without sleeping. My edge is gone, as well as any possibility of being in the best state of mind. So, when it gets to the point of 4 days w/out sleep, I sometimes take one so that I get one solid night -and even then I sometimes wake up. It's 3:40, and I have to be up by 7 so that I can get out of here by 9-10 in the morning and head to the Cape. I also have cramps, so that sucks in and of itself. It sucks even more that I have my period on vacation at 51, though it is better than being pregnant at 51. In fact, at this point in life, as I start to skip periods, I can be found at the counter in Walgreens, buying both Tampax and a pregnancy test. Yeah yeah, old ladies like me don...

I have a driving phobia when it comes to driving places I have never been, or driving on super-highways and in large cities. I am not sure where it comes from, and I have not been able to relate it to any specific trauma in my past other than the time I threw up my breakfast in the back seat of my father's Mercedes, which was not pleasant as he and my mother were pissed, and had to turn around and go back home, canceling our weekend in the country. Somehow that does not seem bad enough to have ruined me for life. My colitis has been acting up, and the past several days I have been a knot of burning guts and stomach...and other things. I don't know if it has been the stress of my aunt dying, or the stress of my having to drive round trip to Queens....part of the way in the pouring rain. I made it there and back, and even had a nice drive last evening out of Queens...and a ride back home today..though the traffic today was a bit thick on the Thruway. Some observations that mad...

I am heading to Westchester tomorrow to pick up my sister, and then we head to Queens to visit my aunt.It will probably be our last visit with her, as they can't do dialysis as her blood pressure is too low, and her kidneys are only functioning at 10% at best. It's only a matter of time. I feel strange as I am sad, but not devastated. I guess when you are 80, have fought years of bone marrow cancer, and up until recently dared to push your way around Queens in a wheel chair, then given 6 months to live with metastatic lung cancer, and STILL pushed your way around Queens in your wheelchair, you deserve applause, not tears. And that is exactly what I am going to give her. Things may change when I see her..a shadow of her self. In the old days, she was given the nickname "the General" at a time where women took a back seat to men. And she has done exactly that...pushed her way past her cancer and taken herself into the world in spite of her pain and her handicaps, ...

Lots of people complain about my city. And I am one of them. They don't know how to plow or pave the roads. Box stores abound, with little care it seems to the the struggling small businesses. Rhinebeck and Woodstock are very busy spots, each only 10 miles away, whereas Kingston is dead. Approximately 40% of the city is owned by not-for-profit who don't pay taxes. There are lots of renters. The rest of us have to pick up the burden and sometimes I wonder, what am I getting? Sewers that are collapsing. Streets that don't divert run-off water correctly so houses/basements/studios flood. The city playground is in disrepair. I feel like it is run by "the boys club". It's stagnant, falling apart. The mayor wonders why people are leaving; I say, what are you doing to want them to stay? But there are a lot of hidden treasures in this city, many of which not open to the public. They are tucked away in the most unsuspecting of places. It is in these places......

It is a slow moving morning, the rain a soft but steady drumming on the roads, broken by the occasional hiss of car tires moving through a layer of water. I don't mind that it is raining again, and I don't even worry about the threats of flash floods, or getting water in the studio. I came downstairs, observing with a smile the scattered remains from the previous day. A bag of diapers on the floor. Shells and stones from my beach collection scattered throughout the house, much more interesting to my little niece and nephew than the Fisher Price toys I bought downstairs for them to play with. Pizza boxes. Limes thrown in the sink, awaiting the compost bin from the drinks I made the night before. The cannoli box, ringed with stains from bits of creme that seeped through. Grass from the lawn scattered from little feet coming in from the sprinker. A few small bags from our shopping adventures. A scrap of mud from the farm. I want to preserve these things, not clean them up. ...