Patti Gibbons Art

With the advent of some financial changes in my life, I have had to put a check on the spending. Usually by this time of year I am pretty broke, and a good thing too, otherwise it might be really hard to get me to go back teaching.  After 18 years, I am getting weary.  It gets harder and harder to go back to work after the summer off (though I do work-just for myself!)  We've taken a hit...with Larry not having a photography class this semester.  Whether it is bad luck, or students not interested in old fashioned darkroom photography, the result is the same. Loss of a chunk of change. Though I do not live "high on the hog", I have become accustomed to having what I need or want, and going out, and making the occasional trip.  Until I get a grip on my finances, and do a budget to see how much money there is for frills, I am keeping a tight grip on my wallet. My recent trip to NYC was not hampered by my lack of money.  In mapping out our adventures, my ...

I copied this from my note page that I published on my Facebook Fan page Catskillpaper.  So if you read it there, STOP. Do not pass GO... I was challeneged by the Mini Works show that Unison Art Center is having at the Unison Gallery at Water Street Market. I had blown off the assignment, mainly because I had been back and forth to Kentucky for a month, then spent the next three weeks recuperating before I took off for vacation.  So what do I do, but leave the project until a week before it is due. I had mulled over the theme "Submerged" while I was gone. Having spent a week at the ocean and living by a lagoon, I had certainly seen a lot of things that were "submerged". I knew that my medium had to be acrylic or mixed media rather than oils -- as the oils would not have enough time to dry. When I returned home, I went into the studio and cleaned out some brushes that I had left in the cleaner, and started picking up around the studio.  I came across a piece I ...

Part of the beauty of life is the journey, whether traveling around the world, or navigating a relationship.  The direct way is not always the easy way, the best way, or the fastest way....   We stayed an extra day so that we could spent time with Larry's sister and her husband who were spending the week after us.   It was great--squeaking out another day at the beach and exploring the island. It felt a little sinful...staying a day beyond when we were supposed to. And we enjoyed every bit of it from going to lunch, shopping, swimming in the ocean, and making dinner together. It was a great way to end our vacation. When it came time to head home, we decided to stay away from I-95 and traveled the interior route, traveling up the middle of South Carolina, the western edge of North Carolina, Virginia,  into Pennsylvania and then landing in NY.  I highly recommend it.  It may have been 50-100 miles longer, but it was still 16 hours---far better than the 21...

It is another world here; it is almost surreal.  Spanish moss drips from trees, entire ferns grow along branches of trees, most of which I cannot identify. Everything seems to grow larger than life, from the leaves on the palm trees, to the bugs and the birds.  Lizards scoot away as we walk. Alligators appear and then disappear into the lagoons.  The ocean is huge. The boats are huge. Anything glass that I have, ranging from my reading glasses, to the lens on my camera, fogs up instantly from the change of humidity and temps going in and out of A/C.  The head index is huge..today a 106. The only thing that appears not to be huge are bathing suits; my underwear has more fabric than most two piece suits I have seen.  Some of the churches are huge, and there are churches all over the place. On the highways (not on Hilton Head--they don't allow this) the signs are huge, announcing cigarettes, fireworks, Jesus saves, and exotic girls, all in a quart...

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...

Since we have already established my reputation as a high stim person, it will come as no shock to you that when I walk I seek out a different route every day.  I  wake up and immediately obsess about how far I want to drive to get to this walk, and what terrain I am in the mood to deal with.  If I am lucky, I have someone to go with me.  I find walking with a friend makes the miles go easier and I go further if I have company Last weekend was Poet's walk, and this weekend I took a good 2-3 mile walk along Hurley Mountain Road which runs by acres of cornfields.  It is a lovely walk with a combo of sun and shade, and you pass sweet farms, bee hives and acres of corn surrounded by purple loosestrife.  The road is not very wide, and what I did not take into account was the fact that it is harvest time and there were tons of tractors and tractor trailers hauling the corn harvest out of the fields.    Sunday morning was a stroll along the Ro...

The past two days I have managed to get some paint time in. The studio is pretty clean, table space available, and canvases begging to be reworked or started.  It's time that I kick into high gear.  I see the light changing, fading, and hear September calling.  I paint in desperation to hold onto the freedom of my summer, and during the time I stand in front of my canvases, I meditate on a plan to get through another year of teaching while keeping stress low and the work load manageable.  How do I balance being a full time teacher AND a full time artist?  How do I shift my thought from TEACHING TAKES AWAY MY ENERGY TO PAINT, into somehow getting energized from my teaching and bringing it home to the canvas?  Photos are of two unfinished paintings; one is of  three little cabins that were hunkered down in the steamy mist of a leftover storm,  looking like they had very long faces, and the other an evening trip over the Hudson, location unknown a...