We caught up with the brilliant and insightful John Gibbs a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi John, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

For me, I don’t think it’s a matter of wishing I would have started earlier or later. I wish I would have pursued my own creative work more consistently earlier. I enjoyed working in various creative industries starting in high school when I worked for a ceramic sculptor. I was helping him make his work and not doing enough of my own. When I graduated from college, I started working for an art foundry casting bronze sculptures. I was in the creative industry but again I was making other peoples work and not doing enough of my own.
I moved to Chicago after a short time and started working in the graphic design industry starting in the production departments. It was not creatively fulfilling. At one point I was laid off at a fortuitous moment when another artist friend had found a financial backer to start an art gallery. I used my newly found free time to make a lot of artwork and help open the gallery. It was a great time creatively. It was the lesson that if you just keep making work and looking for opportunities you will find them. I started having some success in getting my work out there but became too reliant on a couple pieces waiting for them to sell and not making enough new work. I wish I had put into practice more that production is key.

I moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania with my girlfriend and started fresh again. The first weekend we were in town there was an artwalk with open studios all over town. We met a lot of artists and I followed up with everyone I talked with. One of them was a sculptor who was starting a foundry and gallery. We became fast friends and I began working with him to build the foundry and open the gallery. I also got a gallery show at the nicest gallery in town and began making new paintings to show. It was a very creative time for me. I was sculpting, painting, and working to build the foundry and gallery. It was great. I even got my paintings featured in New American Paintings magazine issue 69. Things were going pretty well until I had a falling out with the other sculptor and my wife had to get a new job in North Carolina as her position in Lancaster was only temporary.

We moved to North Carolina and my momentum really stopped. Though, I found work with another sculptor I was using all my energy to make his works and stopped making my own. Looking back, that is one of my biggest regrets. I enjoyed making the work because I liked making art but it wasn’t advancing my own art career. I was making his artwork. I wasn’t making much money either. It took a lot of energy out of me and I didn’t have the energy to make my art. When that ended, I think I fell into a bit of depression. I tried getting back into graphic design to make some money but all I could get were production jobs that didn’t advance my career at all. I was doing some painting between jobs for commissions and occasional shows but not serious enough to turn it into a business. After several years of that I finally reached a conclusion that I needed to make a concerted effort to make a go at being a professional artist again. In that, I guess I wish I would have seen how I wasn’t furthering my career sooner. I got sidetracked working for others and not for myself. I had stopped setting my own goals and trying to get shows which led to more depression. As an artist, if I’m not making artwork I feel depressed or uneasy and cranky.

The last few years, I’ve stopped doing small graphics jobs and limited distracting side projects to focus on creating my own artwork and getting it out there. The more I create, the more opportunities to get in front of new viewers. It is really important to continue making self initiated artwork as much as possible even while working for other people. I guess the lesson I wish I would have learned earlier is just because I was working in a creative industry doesn’t mean I was fulfilling or advancing my creative career.

John, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m an artist based in Greensboro, NC. I’ve been making art professionally since early 2000. I worked in an art foundry after graduating from the University of Michigan with a BFA in Sculpture and Scientific Illustration. After working a short time at the foundry, I moved to Chicago and worked in Graphic Design. I began painting as a more personal creative outlet. My painting style is still influenced by my work in computer graphics and illustration. Many of my paintings are recognizable by use of saturated colors, flowing line work, and graphic style. I want my work to be familiar and accessable with a twist to keep the viewer engaged following the undulating lines.

Though, most of my paintings would be considered abstractions, I do paint realistically for clients. I’ve done portraits of people, animals, and landscapes in various styles at the clients request. One of the works I’m most proud of is a portrait bust bronze sculpture I created while working in Lancaster, Pa. The gentleman was the financial backer for the foundry we were building. I had the idea that we had to do a portrait of this man as he was beloved in the community and the reason we were able to build the foundry. It seemed like a no brainer that we should honor him with a bronze portrait. I offered the idea to the other sculptor I was building the foundry with as he knew the gentleman better than I did, but he said that I should do it. I believe I captured the likeness very well and have always been very proud of that piece.

A painting I am very proud of was commissioned by a developer for the lobby of building in downtown Greensboro, NC. The interior designer that was working on the project liked my work a lot and had given me some commissions in the past. I completed the painting while in lockdown during covid. It was the large cityscape painting at 5’x4′.

Most recently, I’ve begun doing sculptural work again with cardboard. Like many people during the pandemic, we were ordering a lot online and had to deal with a mountain of cardboard. I began making fun things for my son to play with like pirate ships, space ships, swords, and submarines. I began to think of it as a possible sculptural material. I’ve been making sculptural pieces in the round and relief sculptures. One of my favorites has been a polar bear relief that I painted with a limited white and blue palette. Cardboard has begun to be a favorite medium for me. I like its flexibility and range of shapes that can be made. I also like that it has a low carbon footprint as sculpture goes. It is immediate and doesn’t require firing or casting. It can stay flexible even when finished and won’t break if dropped. It is repairable if damaged. I’ve been using it to create sculptures of animals. I think that using this medium to create animals gives the nature of conservation and reuse more impact. Also, taking an accessible medium like cardboard and turning it into a realistic animal sculpture is a lot harder than it looks. Though, at the end you have a fairly light weight sculpture that can be quite large and easily be hung on a wall or from a ceiling.

My goal in any work that I do is to create work that is engaging and resonating to the viewer. Through my creative process of rendering familiar subjects, I work to show the viewer a different perspective and interpretation from my life experience and artistic license.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think this is an especially important question at this moment given the rise of Ai. I saw an ad just the other day that was so obviously created by Ai it wasn’t even funny. The answer is deceptively simple and that is to higher and pay creatives for their work. I have a sticker on the back of my car “Art is Work”. Artists need to be paid for their work. Don’t use Ai that has been trained using the labor of thousands of artists to generate your work. It won’t be long before Ai will be doing your job too.
“Exposure” doesn’t pay bills. Likes don’t feed your family. That being said, if you can’t afford your artist friend’s artwork one thing you can do for them is to actually hit that “Like” button on social media. The more “likes” a post gets the more it is promoted to other people. If you “share” the post it also helps their reach. I often hear from friends in person, “I saw your work on Instagram or Facebook and like what you’re doing.” Well hit that like button. “Share” it on your feed. Someone you know might want to purchase it. The social media algorithms reward likes and shares and promotes popular posts more to become more popular. It’s a snowball or bandwagon effect.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think for non-creatives it would be hard to understand why an artist would undergo such financial hardships in order to make art. It is often a struggle for artists to take off financially. It can be very expensive to maintain an art practice and not pay off for a long time, if ever for some artists. It can be a matter of if I don’t create something that is fulfilling creatively for me I become depressed or irritable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.johngibbsart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johngibbsart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johngibbsart
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gibbs-6716753/

Image Credits

All images by John Gibbs