Ted Gibson passed away peacefully on May 5, at home, lovingly encircled with poetry, stories, and music, among family and friends, including his loving partner of 46 years, Mary Jo Maute, and their daughter, Iris Maute-Gibson.
Ted was Born in Ottawa, Canada to John E. Gibson and Catherine Marshall Gibson. His happiest childhood times were swimming and sailing at his family’s cottage on Lake Rosseau. After high school, Ted moved to California to live with his aunt, work, and attend community college.
Ted fell in love with photography and earned a Fine Arts degree in Photography from Arizona State University in 1973. He studied Shotokan Karate under the guidance of Sensi Koyama, whom he held in high esteem. He dearly loved his hippy years spent in the Phoenix desert and his many close friends from that time.
Ted moved to Boulder, where he earned his MFA in mixed media-studies in 1979 at University of Colorado; and where he met fellow artist Mary Jo. In the attic of CU’s Norlin Library, Ted discovered a large collection of texts and photographs on U.S. labor and western Native American history. That sparked his “Dick & Jane in Retrospect” portfolio of drawings and quotations. To confound the assumption of art as a precious object, he made mixed-media works using societies’ wastefulness. Most well received was his fabulous “Children’s Lunchbox” series. He repainted backgrounds of cast-off metal lunch boxes with social-economic scenes, creating cultural clashes with the banal “American Dream” foreground graphics.
Following grad school, Ted and Mary Jo moved to Billings, Montana. Their beloved daughter Iris was born in 1990. He loved their Southside neighborhood—rallying support for local art projects, community organizing, camping and photographing at Crow Fair, and canoeing on the Yellowstone River. They also spent 3 years on a farm along the Stillwater River, outside of Columbus.
In 1996, the family relocated to Bellingham, Washington. Ted was an engaged father, biking Iris around Birchwood, volunteering in the Bellingham High School weight room, and supporting her work in the community. Karate and weight training were integral parts of his fitness regimen until the effects of Parkinson’s disease forced him to switch to pedaling, dance and PT for people with Parkinson’s. He cherished visiting family and friends in Arizona and the Buffalo/Niagara area; and gathering with Bellingham friends for rowdy potlucks and Taco Lobo dinners.
Ted was a documentary artist, interested in the histories of “ordinary people” and how they lived. He held various jobs—picking citrus, driving school buses, a forest firefighter bus, and semi-trucks cross country. He took photographs wherever possible, and in his words, “most often getting fired for it.” Along with visual art, Ted captured his experiences and emotions in poetry, written alongside mileage marks in his truck driving log or the back of an envelope.
Ted also taught art at colleges, community centers, and through Artist-in-Schools programs. His artistic honors included a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and Canada Council Grant. Although Ted exhibited his work in many states, he resisted reducing his art to a commodity, preferring to preserve it for public engagement. Through the universal language of art, Ted sought to raise consciousness and wage cultural revolution. To continue the conversation, view and share a sample of Ted’s work at tedgibson-art.org.
Iris, Mary Jo, Ted’s brother Ian and sister Christianne, and the Maute and Gibson families miss Ted dearly. Family will gather this fall in Ontario and New York to share memories. Ted’s family welcomes all to an exhibition and celebration of his life and work in June 2025 at Dakota Gallery in Bellingham.
