Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Gibas.
Hi Amy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I am a native to Bay City and attended Delta College and Saginaw Valley State university, earning my Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and drawing. I spent a few years in Athens, Ohio earning my Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing from Ohio University before moving back to Bay City. When I moved back, I missed the artistic community that I had right outside of my studio door during grad school, and came across a program at Studio 23, where I had taught some painting classes while in undergrad. I quickly connected with Valerie Allen and started volunteering with the exhibition committee and the Artist Collective.
While also teaching at Delta College as an adjunct in the art department, I was looking for additional work post-pandemic, and Studio 23 was able to offer me a part-time position as Curator of Membership. Shortly after I began, Valerie decided to retire from her position as Curator of Exhibitions and I was offered a full-time position as Curator of Exhibits & Membership. I had the pleasure of having Valarie as a mentor for several months before stepping into the role.
I’ve been in my current role at Studio 23 for about 4 years, continue to teach part-time at Delta College, and find time to create and exhibit my own paintings from time to time.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There was definitely a time after graduate school when I was unemployed and looking for teaching positions, not sure where I might end up and living back at my parent’s house, trying to make a few dollars on Etsy from my artwork. I was fortunate to be hired as an adjunct at Delta, and picked up a part-time administrative job on the side, but once the pandemic hit in 2020 I lost my administrative position and spent a lot more time on virtual class content for my courses at Delta. It was a challenging time for everyone, and I was lucky to come out of it with a new opportunity being offered to me from the Studio.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
In my role at Studio 23 as Curator of Exhibits & Membership, I am most passionate about the curatorial process. I enjoy the challenge of arranging artwork in a way that feels cohesive and guides the viewer through the gallery, which can be especially challenging for large group exhibits like a juried exhibit or our student and faculty show. I try to create a space for each artist to feel their work is respected and displayed in the best possible way. When I’m arranging artwork, I want the pieces to complement one another and create environments with a particular mood or feeling that might change from one section of the gallery to the next. As an instructor at Delta, I teach a course in 2-dimentional design, and how I teach the formal elements of design definitely informs how I approach the arrangement of artwork in the gallery (and vice versa).
As an artist, I specialize in painting clouds and outer space, typically working in oil but dabbling in other mediums as well. I have always loved space and actually started painting nebula in high school, but it was graduate school that started me painting clouds. My thesis project was “Gibas Aeronautics”, where I would gather my classmates to launch and recover weather balloons equipped with a GPS and Go-pro camera. The journey and the human connections we made became the focus of the thesis, but the paintings that accompanied my exhibit were 6-foot by 10-foot depictions of various stages of the balloon’s journey. The final painting of the series depicted a more imaginative scene of the edge of Earth’s stratosphere, where I presumed my unrecovered craft had traveled to break through the barriers of Earth’s atmosphere to explore the depths of space. While my perspective has shifted to looking up from the ground, I still find joy in painting clouds.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I love the creative energy throughout city and our region. We not only have a plethora of talented visual artists, but the performing arts, muralists, musicians, and concert bands bring so much life and vitality to the area that I think we are lucky to have.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Studio23baycity.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio23baycity
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Studio23TheArtsCenter
