Uncommon beauty

By Liz Barry

Published: August 25, 2008

Inside the small wooden box on Kimberly Gibson’s basement floor, sex meets religion.

The sculpture presents a sensual image of the Virgin Mary, evoking a woman who breastfed her baby and was capable of enjoying sex.

When Gibson, an art teacher at E.C. Glass, debuted the “Mother Mary” sculpture at 921 Main Street Fine Art Gallery in July, she was afraid.

It was the 25-year-old’s first exhibition in Lynchburg, and her art looked nothing like the pastoral landscapes that are so common in town.

As a high school art teacher, she was nervous about showing work with provocative themes. When she shares her art with her students, she keeps the pieces involving sex and nudity out of the classroom.

Gibson says that while scary, the show was a success.

“A lot more people are open to new things than I thought,” she says.

The exhibition motivated Gibson to create more art and to exhibit again. She wants to bring a nontraditional perspective to the city’s art scene.

“I don’t think I fit into what’s popular in Lynchburg, but I think I fit into what’s becoming popular,” she says.

“There is this underground that’s making a little bit of noise now that I think people should know about … . It will bring more people to the area and draw more artists out of the cracks.”

Gibson grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Sweet Briar College, where she studied studio art and education. At 22, Gibson became an art teacher at Glass, where she has just started her fourth year.

Gibson’s approach to teaching is the same as her approach to art: unconventional. She plays music during class and balances instruction of traditional techniques with units on nontraditional
subjects like graffiti art.

“I like to see that (students) have technical skill, but I also like to see them go out of the box and add their own spin.”

Her pet peeve? When students trash their artwork. During end-of-semester clean-up, she makes a rule that no student is allowed to throw away their work in her classroom.

When not designing lesson plans or researching new units, Gibson finds time to create her own art. Balancing work and art is one of her biggest challenges as a young artist.

“I learned if I don’t pick a day to just sit down and do art, I would never be able to do it,” Gibson says.

Her work revolves around the human figure — especially the female form, which Gibson says stems from growing up with seven sisters and attending a women’s college.

She creates intricate sculpted dolls enclosed in wooden boxes, like “Mother Mary,” and 3-foot tall hand-carved wooden statues, along with paintings.
Gibson uses art to explore pieces of her past and identity. She is working on a painting of the back view of an emaciated woman, split into disconnected panels.

“At some point, I thought that was absolutely beautiful,” says Gibson, who says she struggled with bulimia in high school and part of college.

“The reasoning for it, nothing made sense. It didn’t fit together.”

Recently, Gibson began exploring the male form.

One of her dolls, “Man on Stool,” depicts an old man surrounded by peeling wallpaper and an old tile floor.

“A big fear of mine is old age, of being completely and utterly alone,” she says.

“Everything around him is decaying, but he is OK with it.”

Gibson says her art is so personal, an extension of herself.

“Because I have an emotional connection to them, they end up being a part of me.”

For that reason, she’s still not ready to sell her work. When her basement fills up with sculptures, maybe then it will be time.

“I’m not ready for that piece to be, ‘Oh, that looks nice. It will complement the couch in my living room,’” Gibson says.