The Art of Sommer

by Taryn Ripple

The moment you meet her, you know there’ll never be a dull moment in her presence. Everything from the way she moves to the way she speaks demands attention. She’s one of those people with that flair, a larger than life air about her. From her fiery red hair to her pointy black shoes, Sommer Kibbee exudes boldness. You can tell this woman has stories to share. And share she does; after just an hour of listening to her, I’ve heard her thoughts on everything from her ex husband to social media to Post Malone. (Why can’t he be hotter?)

The first thing to know about Sommer is that her mind never stops. After a day of posting, blogging, and designing at the Vernon Company, where she works as a strategic communications specialist, she heads ten blocks down the street to her studio to teach after-school art lessons to young students.

“I run around like a madwoman all day, every day,” she says. “Every day is crazy.”

The Art Junkie studio drips with artistic zeal. Paintings and murals plaster the walls, dried paint is caked on the tables, and light filters in through painted windows. There’s not a bland spot in the room, and in the center of it all is Sommer Kibbee.

She uses the studio as a means to share her passion for art with her students.

“My daughter loves her time in Sommer’s studio and has developed some amazing skills and passions for art there,” says Robyn Friedman, a close friend of Sommer’s. “She does an amazing job pulling others along on her creative journeys.”

A self-proclaimed tree hugger, Sommer is all about upcycling, recycling, and everything in between. “If I can repurpose something, I will,” she says, gesturing to the room around her. “Everything in this entire studio is donated or something I found on the curb.”

Art is everywhere, Sommer tells me, everywhere from music to stop signs to tiles on the floor. Even trite little odds and ends like old jewelry, broken glasses, and aluminum cans can come together on a canvas to make a piece of art.

Some of Sommer’s work is on display in the studio: a zebra set against a dripping multicolor background; a woman shaded with every color of the rainbow; two elephants locked in an embrace, their trunks entwined.

“My style is this chunky combination of realism and abstract,” she says. “There are parts that are realistic but also parts that have gotta be out there.”

Her fiancé Victor will tell her she’s honest to a fault, that she needs a filter. At Vernon, she is the talker of the staff. Sommer talks, people listen.

“They call me the Taylor Swift of Vernon,” Sommer laughs. “If anyone there irritates me in any way they will end up on my blog.”

Her passion for the arts was ignited by her father, who was an artist himself. “The man inspired me beyond words,” Sommer says. He introduced her to everything from pottery to stained glass windows to drawing and painting.

Her ex-husband was a stockbroker. He was sent to federal prison for wire fraud, turned over to the authorities by Sommer’s brother. No longer was she a PTA mom with a stockbroker wife income; she was a single parent with a husband in jail.

“My life turned upside down,” says Sommer, remembering. “It was hard to keep it together for a while.”

It’s interesting how people need an outlet for their feelings, she remarked. For some it’s exercise, writing, meditation. For Sommer, the escape lay in her art.

As a newly single woman, she branched out and challenged herself as an artist. She recalls a period during which she painted naked women, telling the story based on body language alone rather than a subject’s clothing.

“I wanted the facial expressions to tell the story of their feelings,” she says. “Looking back, I was trying to find myself in those paintings.”

Five years ago she met the love of her life, Victor, who proposed to her at long last this year. Along with Victor came an extended family: Between the couple there are five daughters and nine grandchildren, with one on the way.

Victor bled color back into Sommer’s life, and her artwork reflects it.

“When I was painting [during my first marriage] all of my backgrounds were black,” Sommer says. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it. And now, every damn thing I paint is rainbow.”

So what does the future hold for Sommer Kibbee? Someday, she’d like to move to Seattle to finish a manuscript she’s writing about her fiancé. However, that may not be in the cards, at least not for many years.

“We just bought this massive house, so truthfully I’ll probably still be finishing that,” she says of what she’ll be doing ten years from now. “It’s a forever house. I’d better be married, at least.”

Though the future is uncertain, Sommer is sure of one thing.

“I’ll still be writing and I’ll still be doing art,” she says. “You can’t take that out of a person. You just can’t.”