Patti Gibbons Art

A long time ago, I wrote a  funny blog called "House of Broken Chairs" , about my shabby chic, but sometimes dangerous chair collection. In fact, several times over the past few months, people have commented on the ricketyness of my chairs.  I shrug, and tell them "it is the best I can afford" and tell them not to rock, and have warned some of my friends (which is anyone who weighs over 150 lbs) against sitting in certain chairs lest the bottoms fall out.    Recently a good friend of mine told me he had a set of 6 MATCHING chairs from Crate and Barrel for sale.  He sent me a photo, and Larry looked at them and said "THOSE ARE THE UGLIEST CHAIRS I HAVE EVER SEEN".  I told him that I was going to see them---that perhaps they weren't the red/orange/mellon color that came to me over the Internet. Sure enough, computer/camera/monitor colors were off, and they were indeed what I had hoped for.. a deep rich cherry red, a color which seems to be  tak...

Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down Oh, yes, Lord Sometimes I'm almost to de groun' Oh, yes, Lord Nobody knows de trouble I've seen Nobody knows but Jesus Nobody knows de trouble I've seen Glory Hallelujah!   I am glum.  About as glum as Eyeore.  I always avoid the Eyeore type, and here I am, going Emo on myself. I started cooked dinner, and decided in the middle of it that I no longer wanted to eat.The last few days have been surreal, some of it in a nightmarish crazy way, others in beautiful magical mystical ways. Both extremes intertwined around one another in a fight for who will win.    don't point your finger till you know where I've been.... 'cause you don't know the trouble I've seen.... I goin' for broke to be Emo Queen.... oh no no NOBODY knows the trouble I've seen....     .      

Long difficult day. A phone call that rocked my world. I can't project what could happen, I have to live moment by moment. It came before I had to leave for a class tonight which made me late and deeply rattled. Class started, the medication kicked in for the blooming stress migraine, I regained some composure, though I had no desire to share any ideas or stories. It's just that way sometimes. It was a class on creative journaling, and one of the prompts was "Other People's Moms". I chose to write my brief memory using another prompt, "what are you doing now" during a time with that mom. (preface, she was my best friend's mom, and I talk to her still) "We are at Ohler's Mountain Lodge in West Hurly. It is a hot summer vacation day, 1974. I am wearing a borrowed bikini from Wendy, but it is a bit too big on top, and it covered my breasts and then some, yet showed more of me than anyone else has seen. If the nuns saw this, th...

  I am in the clean and organize mode.  Today we finished putting away all of the Holiday decorating; the garland and lights that wind up the stairs, over the doorways, around the mantle.  Over the years we have become better at this, and I have starting paring down our accumulation of Christmas "stuff". My goal is to have just the right amount of things to enjoy life. And, the older I get, the less I need. I have reached the cresendo of "stuff" and am now emptying out.  It's amazing how much we can amass over 35 years, and after seeing the effects of hoarding with my aunts, I am scared straight man. When ever I feel like I want to keep more of the the stuff than I should, I look at the pictures of their house filled with their stuff/garbage, and I quickly shift focus.  I cannot create amongst chaos, so I have to put the time in to get my life in some kind of order and then my mind is free to make art. Tonight's art is a photo of an antique sewing t...

A while back I invested in a huge old falling apart salesman's book that contained many botanical prints.  They are chromolithographs , a fancy word for a color lithograph print. I love this method of printmaking, as the colors are dense and rich.  Because it is so time consuming, few, if any, do them anymore, thus making such prints a collectors item. You can tell a chromolithograph print apart from any other method of printmaking by looking at the print with a loop or magnifying glass (some of you might be able to use your naked eye, lol). The surface of the print consists of a series of dots of color, many laid on top of one another. During the industrial revolution, many of the advertising cards, trade cards, postcards, die cuts, and prints were made with this method. Now it has nearly disappeared. This book belonged to a salesman who marked the prices of the plants on the pages in pencil. Written on the front of this leather bound book was the type DO NOT MAKE M...

Lately no time for art.  Work, then appointments of all kinds.  Physical, eye doc, therapist, naturopath,   PT and dentist. And that doesn't even account for the tests that I can't keep up with.  Bone scans, mammos, blood work, pap smears, blah blah blah.  My doctor yells at me because I haven't gotten my yearly blood test (did I mention I hate needles?) and hangs the phrase "non-compliant" over my head.  Sometimes I wonder if it all is necessary.  Eventually, out of guilt, I will slink off off to the lab and make it very clear that they get one chance, and one chance only, to get my blood.  I have tiny veins. Tonights piece was fast, spontaneous -  think of it as  a sketch in photography and digital art.Three of my paintings arranged with leftover Christmas decor, along with my yard sale chalkware Jesus pasted into the foreground.  I probably seem a touch irreverent as I have titled it Jesus on the Hudson.  But wha...

Yesterday was my first day out and about in a very long time.  I felt well enough to bounce around a few counties, and even in the right head for shopping, which is a rarity for me. I don't know when I lost the taste for shopping, but I suspect it was around the same time I lost taste for preparing elaborate meals every evening.  Or preparing any meals for that matter.  My shopping patience wore out somewhere in the middle of aisle 14, with two kids singing "daylight come and we wanna go home" and my son wearing a bra upon his head.   Once I even left an entire shopping cart in the middle of the store before I hauled their ornery little asses home, and stuffed them in a bedroom far away from me, with visions of Hansel and Gretal dancing in my head. I had not planned to shop, it was my girlfriend's sneaky trick. Oh, let's stop in THIS store  -the Ameribag store, with shoes that I fell in love with.  A half an hour later, and 60.00 lighter (oh but a...

I could not get in the mood to write this week. Between the earthquake in Haiti and the untimely death of a ex-student's father, I felt that anything that I wrote would be trivial compared to the pain and suffering of so many. Though we feel assaulted and pained by the images we see on the news, we will never know how horrible conditions are in Haiti.   We aren't bearing witness to the sounds of suffering, the stench of the dead and dying, the despair of those who have no water, food, or medical help. And THEN to hear the comments made by those such as Rush Limbaugh and others....who have gone over the top to show the  world what stupid, ignorant,  disrespectful, and morally irresponsible human beings they are.    I hope they don't call themselves Christians.  Yes -  I am angry. I  searched for an organization that would accept a donation through Paypal.  Many that I had links to only took credit cards, which is a no-go for me the...

    My motto for my cards is "Give your love a card he/she won't forget OR throw away." Each card is one of a kind, made with antique Victorian paper (no copies-the real thing), and they are made with love, lust, humor, and visits from the muse. I have been designing cards for some 15 years now, and mainly sell privately.  In the past they could be found locally in card or gift shops -  however, with boutiques going in and out of business these days, I  am only selling on Etsy, or, if you know me, you get to see what is in my recent stash of cards I have made.   You have NO IDEA how much fun I have making these cards.  I don't have much time after work to paint, but I can get into the studio for an hour or so, and come up with new cards WHILE cleaning out my stash of antique and vintage papers.  Each time I go through a pile it is like treasure hunting; I never know what will come out of it.   A card, an idea, a blog, inspiratio...

  I  stole the idea of having a Feng Shui sale from gallery owner Christina Varga. I  fully intended to bring several pieces to her  January Feng Shui sale where artists were invited to bring art to sell at prices to move it on out.   I ended up getting sick, unable to pull together and price the pieces, so as a result, I decided to do a sale in my Etsy store. The prices are cheap. Some are even horrendously cheap.  But I am ready to let them go, which is sometimes difficult for me to do.  I get very attached to my work, but now that I am doing more, I cannot hang nor store everything, so I am starting to move out the art that I feel I can let go. Now there are those that say an artist should never do this. It would be better to give or throw the art away than to offer it below its retail value. But THEY, whoever they are, are not paying my studio gas bill, or the fees for the organizations and shows that I enter, nor framing bo...

I have been sick the last few days, and have been home trying to heal myself. Normally I only take sick days when I am deathly ill, but as of late I ask myself, why wait until I am half dead to take a sick day, when I should be resting and healing as soon as I get ill? The past few days I have had a headache and a rumble in my chest which is a precursor to the usual bout of bronchitis that I seem to get when I feel like this. Instead of working myself till I have full fledged bronchitis, I decided to stay home and drink my ginger tea potions and rest so that I can AVOID getting it this winter. Larry seems to be getting what I have, and came home with a horrible headache. I made a very humble dinner, and he sat at the table holding his head, moaning.I had already given him some medicine to make him feel better, but it obviously wasn't enough. He was up all and down all night, tossing and turning, keeping me up, which I wouldn't mind save for that he didn't take any...

My friend and fellow artist, Jonathan Talbot, along with some of his friends, has designed a website called http://www.theartsmap.com/ which puts artists on a map all over the world. You can connect with other artists through it, or, if someone is visiting a locale with her husband, and she doesn't want to play golf but would rather look for studios that sell ceramics in that area, she can find local artists who do that. Or for painters, graphic artists, craftspeople. It is an ingenious way to find and connect with other artists. For now, he is offering the first year free with the following code: FYFJAN. After that, it will be for a very reasonable cost that you are listed on the map. (and believe me, it will be affordable for even us part time struggling artists). I think it is a great opportunity, and what do you have to lose, save for a few moments of your time to create the listing. As artists we need to do all the networking we can, and this is a great way to start 2010....

That is the word of the year after responses to my last blog. SIMPLIFY. Clutter, paperwork, businesses, cooking, entertaining, my art. As a result, I have been cleaning up piles, throwing things out, giving things away, selling things - which in turn will help make my life both emotionally and visually calm and more focused. One of the books that I read this past summer was Rightsizing Your Life which was an excellent and interesting read, and it gives ways to help de-clutter one's home. I think I have the book Voluntary Simplicity buried somewhere in my house, and as the piles disappear (several already have) it will be discovered, at the exact moment I will be ready for it. (I believe that everything happens in its own time) Part of this need for simplicity and change has been greatly influenced by my dealing with my aunt and her sister's estate, the fallout from their OCD/hoarding disorder, which is having a major impact on being able to clean it and sell the house. It ...

The past several days have been incredibly busy. So busy that I have not stepped into the studio in weeks. I am getting withdrawal, and wishing I had a vacation from the vacation. I don't want to use this as a forum for whining, and I try to be positive, but I have had to face some realities, and must learn how to deal with them. This year I have decided that "realizations" are more beneficial than "resolutions" as they mean I am thinking and reflecting, and desiring change. Or perhaps the reality is they are one in the same... Some things I have reflected on about myself and need to resolve are the following: 1) I don't like entertaining. I love to hang with people, (sometimes) but hate the prep that it takes to make it happen. If I had a magic wand and could have someone clean and cook and then clean up the mess, it would take a lot of the pressure off me and I might actually enjoy it. 2) I no longer like to cook. Somewhere along the line I ran out of jui...