Patti Gibbons Art

                                     The Strange Moon Like Landscape of the Golf Course A sweet little bungalow on the Course     At Wellfleet Harbor    The Salt Marsh at the Eastham Visitor Cente I am on vacation on Cape Cod.  Over the years I have come to know and love the Cape, with its oceans, bays, salt marshes, restaurants. The only thing I DON'T like about the Cape is the 4.5 hour ride which usually turns to a 6 hour ride due to traffic. Over the past several years we have been finding places of our own to stay, rather than staying with friends. We can come and go, and not worry that we are cluttering up their house with our photography and art equipment, or estate/junking finds. Renting sight unseen on the Cape is someti...

On one of those silly Facebook apps, I did a survey on "Which writer am I?"  The answer was Jack Kerouac. I have not read the book On the Road, , but now feel obligated to do so.  I suspect we have a lot in common, though much of it I will never admit to publicly, until I am retired.  Then, and only then, will you get the unedited version of my life. The past week has been stressful getting ready for our road trip to Hilton Head, SC, about 900 miles from my house.   Two years ago we drove to Kentucky to see Megan and baby Randy after he was born, and I swore I would not spend that much time in a car again.  But we were offered a bungalow on a lagoon on an island, so how could I turn it down? A few days before we left, as I was packing and doing the 10,000 things that had to be done,I exploded  to a D cup, and could not move without pain. I started having cramps. Headaches. And cranky? I bulldogged my way through the day, feeling lucky that no on...

A few cards that I made today in the studio gave me a chuckle - one being something my mother used to say in the old days "S'occuper de ses oignons" which translates to "take care of your own onions", or in other words, MYOB, ANOTHER idiom I heard many times in my life (mind  your own business).  Somewhere along the line it became "mind  your own onions" in her English translation, but it still meant the same. The phrase on the other card was from a book on Victorian dance/party etiquette about how UNCOOL it is to be a wallflower at someone's party.  But I think it could become an idiom for life---"only those who dance should accept invitations to the ball." In other words, in the idiom that Ex #1 used: "shit or get off the pot".  Of course, there is the idiom I used one day to one of the farmers/vendors at the Saturday market, and that was when he said that he had heard about people burying pennies with their tomatoes to p...

I don't do a lot of entertaining because that means I have to face doing a good cleaning job on my house.  The reality is, that if I did not have events from time to time, I probably would never clean.BUT - I am hosting an event this week which means that I need to clean after I get home from my appointments, for the next three afternoons. Not just the ordinary sweep,vacuum, wash kitchen floor and clean toilet and tub, but a tear apart the bathroom, clean the woodwork that people can see, wash all the wood floors on two floors, move furniture, get the dust webs and so forth.  Sometimes that even involves washing all the towels and curtains (I have cats who seem to leave a lot of cat hair on them when they look out the windows). And there is the junk, always the junk. I hate to clean.  OK, I get pissed that I have to clean because the time spent cleaning could be time spent in the studio, reading, watching a movie, or some other fun endeavor.   It was the ret...

I have been working hard on building up more stock of my cards for submission to Olana, to have them ready at the drop of a hat when my client emails me "NEED MORE CARDS" and to have for others to buy. I just spent nearly 100 dollars investing in about 500 pieces of new paper and postcards, in order to be ready. It is harder and harder to get antique paper at a price that I can afford to create with. I am a one woman show here, and only hire someone on occasion to help me put on the finishing touches of glitter for holiday cards, to package/label/price them, and that is usually just before a big show. The rest of the time I do it all myself; the designing, sewing, and usually everything else in between. Then there is the marketing, the listing on Etsy, and the occasional post here and on Facebook etc. I will never get "wealthy" from these cards, as they are labor and material intensive, but oh do I so enjoy making them. Since I often can't get into the studi...

First of all, if you are a man and you are squeamish about discussing women's bodies and such, stop reading. This is NOT for you. But for some of you, it might be educational, and give you some insight into the women in your life, whether sister, lover, wife, mother, etc. And for my women friends, I can see you shaking your heads up and down in empathy. At almost 52, I should be done with this menstruation bit. Somehow, when I turned 50, I thought, HOORAY, it is going to be over! Then my dear friend told me she did not go through menopause until she was 62. I wanted to scream. I am having "issues". For three years now I have had cycles that last 14-28 days, usually on the 14-21 day end. For a week ahead of time I have insomnia, night sweats, and the day before it hits, I get a headache that drops down over me like a cowl. We won't even discuss the occasional melt downs from time to time, but I know enough now to warn Larry and tell him (in the middle of being sarca...