About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 14, 2018)
Nick Bowman Features Editor | 770-718-3426 | life@gainesvilletimes.com She (Times gainesvilletimes.com Friday, December 14, 2018 Photos by NICK BOWMAN I The Times Maysville artist Kerstyn Gibbs got her start in animal-based art using shed reptile skin to make jewelry — bracelets, necklaces, even guitar picks — and now uses ethically collected animal parts to make sculptures influenced by the “oddities” community in the Southeast. Kerstyn Gibbs is the artist behind Gibbs Clan Curiorities based in her home in Maysville. Beginning with stone beads, Gibbs’ art has grown from the simple to the strange — focusing on “oddities” sculptures vthat include ethically-collected animal bones, raw gemstones and other natural elements. Kerstyn Gibbs: An artist to her bones This Maysville sculptor brings new life to dead things BY NICK BOWMAN nbowman@gainesvilletimes.com Kerstyn Gibbs wants to collect roadkill. You might have seen the 26-year-old Maysville artist at the North Hall Christmas Market or Mule Camp Market selling wares that have changed as much as she has over the years. Reptile skins, jewelry, animal bones, insects fro zen in time — if you’ve passed one of her booths, you’ll remember it. Originally from Hoschton, Gibbs started trying to sell her art as a child being toted to small trade shows by her mother, Sheryl Webb. Back in the day, she was making glass and stone jewelry. “At the first one I told her, ‘Mamma, this is what I want to do when I grow up,”’ Gibbs said, sit ting on a park bench in Maysville on a sunny, breezy December morning. She’s wanted to be an artist since she could hold a crayon, but despite being raised in a conser vative Christian home in Jackson County, Gibbs tended toward the fantastical — bright colors, wild beasts, unreal shapes. The medium has changed over the years, from crayon to pencils and markers, from plastic beads to glass to gemstones, from clay to bone and bugs, but the subject has been fixed on the fantastic — and moving gradually into the odd. Gibbs, who’s quick to laugh despite being an anxious artist still finding her footing in North Georgia (she focuses on her art while her husband, Caleb Gibbs, works in IT), traffics in ethically collected “oddities,” an art and media subculture that shares a table in the cafeteria with ste- ampunk focusing on the old, the rusted, the preserved. “Bone mushrooms — that’s where it started,” Gibbs said, speaking up from across the bench after striking on the mem ory of how she got into the world of oddities. “I was making bone mushrooms. I would just take a little piece of wood and make this almost fairy garden out of bones and stuff. I would use snake ver tebrae for the stalks and sand dol lars for the tops, and I’d add moss and crystals.” Fairy gardens themselves are a relatively mainstream spinoff of the bonsai tree hobby — mix ing meticulous care and design with miniature worlds. Gibbs’ spin on it took her into the world of oddities, including a trade show that recently visited Atlanta and will come again in February, where her creations have become increasingly in-demand. “It’s a weird culture for some people, but it’s really popular,” said Cyndi Moore, a friend of Gibbs’ and owner of Reigning Reptiles, a reptile pet and supply shop in Buford. “It’s nature and art — why not use what’s here for art?” Moore struck up a friendship with Gibbs when the girl walked into her store in 2014 looking for a pet. Through the years, the busi ness owner has carried some of Gibbs’ artwork and even given her some supplies for her art — shed snake- skins, not bones. “I’m a widowed mom, and it was hard for me,” Moore said. “I know it’s hard for women in general in this business, and when I see her, I see that. I try to give her help because I wish I had it.” In the new subcul ture, she found all number of supplies of ethically harvested and collected bones that she’s made into the lat est medium for her art, which has grown into a series of sculp tures combining animal parts with copper, gemstones and other materials. Her pieces are unnamed and are generally presented as scenes within glass showcases. From the back of an art-cluttered SUV, she produced a tall, glass display case holding a copper tree cov ered with preserved Asian moths. At its base sat a raccoon skull crusted in quarts and raw emer alds. The animal had been killed by a car, and she purchased the skull through one of her oddities markets. “I don’t like wasting anything, so that’s why I do this — I take what other people would discard and I put it to use,” she said. As a whole piece, the display isn’t intended to jar or to unset tle — you might not even notice the particulars without looking closely and instead see the emer ald glitter of the moth wings or the clean copper winding up the glass. There are others — a deer skull wound in the center of a rabbit fur dreamcatcher, a bat skeleton hanging upside down above a bed of black gems — that aim for stronger reactions. As a matter of fact, Gibbs’ insect pieces are her best-sellers. She makes small, glass displays with posed insects on display over a bed of rough gems. “People don’t think of them being dead so much as a mam mal,” she said. “The mantises usually go within 30-45 minutes of the show opening.” But in the long run, she sees more and more bones in her work. The young artist wants to study taxidermy and, eventually, have the time and tools to har vest her own roadkill to clean and remake into her art — rather than let it rot on the roadside. “It can take six months to a year to prop erly clean bones,” she said. It comes as no shock then, to you or to Gibbs, that her art has been get ting more and more out of step with the small markets that got the woman her start in the art world. She plans to keep visiting Mule Camp Market in Gainesville, but in the future will focus on oddities mar kets while keeping up a social media presence. But what might come as a sur prise is the welcome she gets from people in the oddities world, where the unconventional is in high demand. “I did really well at the Atlanta Oddities and Curiosities Expo. I did really well there — that was my best show,” she said. “It was one day, and I beat my best three- day event (while I was there). There was not a single second from the time the doors opened to the time the doors closed that my booth was not full. ” It went so well, in fact, that she’s considering following the traveling show into a few neigh boring states. “It feels good knowing that I have put all of this time and a lot of money into this stuff — and people are actually really loving it,” Gibbs said. ‘It’s nature and art — why not use what’s here for art?’ Cyndi Moore Reigning Reptiles owner Sculptures from Maysville artist Kerstyn Gibbs combine morbid elements — animal bones and skulls, some even harvested from roadkill — with raw gemstones. In this unnamed piece, a raccoon skull decked in raw emeralds anchors a copper tree covered in Asian butterflies. After getting her start in community markets like the North Hall Christmas market, Maysville artist Kerstyn Gibbs is finding a new outlet in the “oddities” community, which recently had a show in Atlanta where she shows off works like this sculpture that includes a real skeleton of a hanging bat. Keep your plants safe from this unsuspected killer Riding to work today, the sky was actually blue. What a strange sight! It seems like it has rained every day for the past year. Now add cold to the wet. To say our soils are saturated would be an understate ment. If anyone is running their irrigation systems, shame on you — your plants are drowning. I get many calls and emails related to plants having some type of health issue. Most of the time I can diagnose by asking just a few simple questions. Far and away the number one issue related to an unhealthy plant is too much water. That’s right, I said it — too much water. We water our plants way more than we need to, and we are drowning them. Root rot diseases are by far the CAMPBELL VAUGHN ecvaughn@uga.edu most damaging diseases in Geor gia’s landscapes. They occur in wet soils with limited soil drainage or in areas that are over-watered or remain wet due to location of gutters and downspouts, air condi tioning units and slopes; or in our case, Noah’s Ark-type rains. All landscape plants (trees, shrubs and flowers) are suscep tible to root rot. The most com mon pathogens causing root rot diseases are the soil-borne fungi Pythium, Phytophthora and Rhi- zoctonia. The symptoms are simi lar to a plant not getting enough water with wilting and leaves turn ing colors. My simple explanation for what goes on in root rot fungus is this, when the soil stays moist for too long, a slime (root rot) forms on the actual roots and prevents the plant from absorbing any moisture or nutrients. This fungus acts as as a barrier and then the plant droops. Then we add more water because we think the plant is thirsty. Eventually the root liter ally rots and dies. Dead roots lead to dead plants. There isn’t much we can do about the deluge of weekly rain water, but we can do some things to manage our landscapes to mini mize disease infestations. Inspect plants for root rot symptoms before purchasing and installing into the landscape. Sometimes plants that have been sitting on the shelf at a store has been watered eleven times a day for the past four months. Plants under stress are more susceptible to root rot pathogens. If the soils are susceptible to soaking conditioning (especially clay soils), try and improve soil structure and drainage by incor porating organic matter or good quality compost. If the drainage is very poor, you may have to install some type of French drain. If you have roof gutters, hard pipe the water to an area where it can flow elsewhere. Do not install plants too deep. That will not only kill the roots, but rot the base of the plant. And when it is raining, please turn off your irrigation system. As a general rule, your standard foundation plants like hollies, box wood, ligustrum, gardenias and loropetalum don’t need supple mental water once they are estab lished unless it is super hot and hasn’t rained for a very long time. Save your plants and your water bill. Turn back the water and let the landscapes live. Campbell Vaughn is UGA Extension- Agriculture and Natural Resource Agent in Richmond County. He can be reached at ecvaughn@uga.edu.
