Sybil Gibson
(1908-1995) Alabama/Florida
Born in Dora, Alabama, Gibson earned a degree in elementary education and became a teacher; whatever artistic ambition she had in her younger years was quashed by the toxic comments of a college art instructor. But on Thanksgiving in 1963, she started making her own gift-wrapping paper designs, using tempera paint and grocery bags. In May 1971, she disappeared before her first exhibition, at the Miami Museum of Modern Art, opened. This was the beginning of a nomadic pattern of behavior that would last for nearly the rest of her life. Her work is in the collections of Museum of Art, AL; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL; American Folk Art Museum, NY, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA.
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