Patti Gibbons Art

At 53 I can taste retirement. But because of the Health Insurance issue, (notice I have given the issue  caps due to its importance as an American business institution) and the fact that I still have a mortgage to pay off, I am girding myself for a few more years of teaching.   But on  winter vacations, which I use to recover from the busy life that I lead from September through December,  I get glimpses into how I am going to design my retirement. I know the best laid plans can often go astray, but I also believe in visualizing and making what dreams I can, come true. My winter retirement life would look something like this: I wake up when the sun is slowly rising, and  spend some time on the heating pad (I am trying to get the back better, but it is in a holding pattern) while I read the novel of the day/week/month.  I put on my yoga/sweat clothes, I do my 5 Tibetan exercises on my wool rug in front of the fireplace, while the sun shines on me ...

I am trying to be Zen this year during the holidays. Being Zen means pacing myself, making sure that I am enjoying whatever I am doing, getting enough sleep, and not imbibing in too much of anything at the myriad of parties I have been invited to. The most dangerous parties are the ones I host...as the bed is at the top of the stairs, and I don't have to drive.  I am drinking ginger tea every time I feel an illness coming on and drinking lots of water.  I dress appropriately for the weather, and take time to exercise and spend quiet/meditation time in the morning and evening.  And my mantra is "it all is what it is". And until my next blog is carefully edited and ready to go, I am giving you this: the history behind the phrase "to tide you over" , and an article  "10 Occasions for Sending a Greeting Card". Personally, though I do enjoy virtual cards, there is nothing like a paper greeting card to put upon the mantle.  And it's even better i...

Now that my shows are  over, I am concentrating on selling some of my holiday vintage and antique papers online. I only have another five days or so that I can send in time for the holidays, so I am on a listing frenzy for the next few days.  After that, I sale it out, and if it does not sell, it gets put away for another year, or else it goes into the pile that gets cut up. These prints are in my catskillpaper Etsy shop; they invoke a time in a my childhood that was magic.  Somehow all was made better with the advent of Christmas, and these images remind me of a time when I really believed that magic happened.  I still remember the smell of our artificial tree as I entered the room, and the vintage  pixies that hung from the table top tree,  the real tree my grandmother had in Queens, coolly lit by huge blue bulbs.  Snippets of Nat King Cole wind through my head, along with Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and It's A Won...

A few weekends ago I picked up several lots of Victorian holiday cards, many of which I  used in my greeting cards. There were many however, that are too beautiful or collectible to cut up. Those I will eventually list on eBay or Etsy; some I will keep for my collection. Many of the cards (and some booklets) were printed by Raphael Tuck (England) who were printers of postcards, greeting cards, children's books, chromolithograph prints, etc., and were one of the first companies to offer contests for greeting card design.   They are one of my favorite companies, along with the fine quality postcards that Stengel printed.  With the advent of the industrial revolution and the growth of industry all around, postcard/card/scrap collecting became the rage, where women and children collected these images and pasted them into ledgers, scrapbooks, and was the start of scrapbooking in this country. The quality of chromolithograph printing is like nothing else you will find ...

I can relax now.  The craft fair is over, I managed to have work in three galleries for the month of December.  I just found out that I sold a small watercolor at an October fundraiser, though I have not been paid yet. Lately I have been pondering my future.  I have been teaching for 19 years, and am fantasising about when I can retire and reinvent myself. I sense that this reinvention will be a synthesis of art/writing/teaching, and I have been told over and over that I need to start pulling my work together in  a series.My ADD head steers me in many directions,  and I fear that the only way I can do this is by making many series of works. My themes are varied, and include  landscapes in oil and encaustic, and narrative mixed media works.  But wait, I've got fantasy, social, historical and auto-biographical narrative themes. Which theme do I explore, which medium? What am I best at? What does the public gravitate toward? Do I care what the public l...