A Dallas artist and his father made art that makes ice - The Dallas Morning News

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Inspired by work they did together decades ago, a father and son collaborated on an art machine made with HVAC materials.

Named to honor his father, Dad runs continuously. With parts similar to what you would find in a walk-in cooler, it has two coils that freeze moisture in the air. The machine can only gather so much ambient moisture, but it keeps the two ice sculptures frozen. One is larger than the other, reminiscent of a father and son.

Jeff Gibbons, 38, is one of the founders of Culture Hole, a DIY Dallas art gallery. He is also a reclusive artist who attributes some of his aesthetics and skill sets to the HVAC work he did with his dad as a teen in Detroit.

“We had a hard time living in Detroit,” said Gibbons. Indeed, during their years in Motor City, Gibbons and his parents all suffered violent attacks while being robbed. “I left Detroit in my early twenties with a decent amount of trauma.”

He says the work with his father was grueling, often requiring him to walk on frozen roofs or be around sharp metal. It also involved electrical, plumbing, and sheet metal work.

He still remembers some of the houses he and his father worked on in Detroit, one in particular from his early teens. Shortly after its owner, a man in his 80s, had passed away, they were in a decrepit two-story colonial house with an eight-foot hole in the roof. Water had leaked two floors down into a children’s swimming pool placed on the living room floor. “It was filled to the brim, it was the middle of the winter, and there was no heat in the house, so it was a big frozen kiddie pool,” Gibbons said. “It somehow seemed to encapsulate a lot of struggle and pain.”

“That really stuck in Jeffrey’s head,” said his father, Mike Gibbons, now 65 and living in Key West. “You could tell it used to be a really nice house.”

Over the years, his son kept thinking about that house and wondered how long it would have taken for a hole in the roof to create such a large piece of ice, all while a man was living inside. “I wanted to see an ice block grow in a space and be a living thing that doesn’t have to be contained in something cold,” Gibbons said.

Then a few years ago, his father was suddenly interested in being an artist and wanted to take up painting, but never quite got started. When asked to build Dad, however, he used more than three decades of experience as an HVAC technician to build art and form a new bond with his son.

“I remember we had a lot of back and forths growing up,” Gibbons said. “Getting along and not getting along. Sometimes I was angry at him, but we both had a lot of stuff we had to go through. This was a new way to bond with him though and I’m thankful for it. We don’t talk to each other all the time and we don’t always tell each other that we love each other, but we do.”

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A Dallas artist and his father made art that makes ice - The Dallas Morning News
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