Daughter refurbishing wood scenes on homes made by late father, Gary Gibbons
OCEAN CITY — Throughout Ocean City and neighboring island towns, numerous houses are adorned with painted woodcuts of sea gulls or dolphins or shore scenes on their outdoor walls or have wood sculptures of shore birds or sailboats livening up their front yards.
There’s a good chance those wooden creations were made by Gary Gibbons.
Known for his “Art Work by Gar,” he focused on his art from the late ’80s until his death in 2012. In the past few years, his daughter, Kelly Gibbons-Conti, has started work on restoring the pieces that have faded over time.
The 1986 Ocean City High School graduate never had the chance to work with her father, but after moving back to the shore in 2018 after 30 years away, she decided her dad’s work should not be left to fade and decay.
Gibbons was always an artist, according to his daughter, with a store called Artist’s Corner at Gillian’s Wonderland Pier in the 1970s. He was a portrait artist and worked on paintings among other things.
In 1988, she said he got very spiritual and decided to devote his life to Christ and his artwork. He gave up his jobs at the casinos in Atlantic City and started a business. At different points he worked at 1044 Asbury Ave. and also at 705 Haven Ave.
For the Asbury Avenue business, an ad with a pen-and-ink self portrait offered “fine arts and gifts for your loved ones” and ended, “Come to see and celebrate with me my return to art work.”
An ad for the Haven Avenue location offered “Relationships with Wood” that could be viewed at businesses in Strathmere, Philadelphia, Manahawkin, Ocean City and at private homes throughout the area.” “One of a kind creations” at “easy going prices,” the ad read.
“He lived through his artwork,” Gibbons-Conti said. “He just did his work and unexpectedly passed away in 2012. If he was still alive, I’d probably be doing this with him. He was doing it at 72 years old.”
He cut all the pieces himself, many of them salvaged from old boats, and used found materials such as driftwood.
Over the years she was living in Pennsylvania, she would periodically return to the shore and would drive around “to spot the Gars.”
“There is a lot of them. I noticed they were getting dilapidated,” Gibbons-Conti said.
“Until the day he died, my father would refurbish what he had done. He would go to his clients, see something a little scuffed up or with the paint coming off, and he would touch them up,” she said.
When she moved back to the area in 2018, she saw a few that “were looking nasty,” so she put notes into the mailboxes at three homes.
“I told them I was Gary Gibbons’ daughter and would love to refurbish the work,” she said.
She was contacted by two people with neighboring homes. One person who contacted her had a large, colorful (but faded) scene with a balloon facing the parking lot of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church at 39th Street and Central Avenue. (Her father attended that church.) The neighbor had a shore scene.
“I got a call from this woman and she said, ‘I want you to do the balloon.’ They called it the balloon man. What prompted her was she re-siding her house and her siding guy took it down.”
One of the works was a total rebuild, she said.
Her father took pictures of all his work so she knew what they looked like before the years and shore weather took their toll. After one was down, she went to the industrial technology teacher at Wildwood High School, where she works as a lunch lady. She gave a donation to the class and brought the wood and “he cut out the pieces on this fancy machine.”
One took all winter to paint.
Gibbons-Conti calls her work “a labor of love. It’s a way to be with him. I wish I worked with him while he was alive.
“It was always his dream, more so with my brothers, to have them do it with him,” she said, but they were musicians and had other plans.
Gibbons-Conti has gotten the opportunity to do her refurbishing work by word of mouth. She is limited in her time, but those with an “Art Work by Gar” can email her at kellygibbons725@gmail.com.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff