Brookfield artist and writer Nina Gaby came to Vermont in 2001 with the intention of being an innkeeper, but has ended up as the Associate Director of Second Spring, the psychiatric step down facility situated in the renowned former Autumn Harvest Inn in Williamstown, once owned by inn keeping colleague Carolyn White.
Gaby and husband Craig Smith sold their Green Trails Inn in 2005, retaining the Guest House, built in 1790 as their home and Gaby's art studio and gallery. The best part, Gaby will tell you, is her writing room, a sunny corner room stenciled in 1800 with a picture perfect view of the "famous" floating bridge.
Just released in the Spring 2008 issue of Lilith magazine is Gaby's short story "The Anti-Zen of Grandma", a story dear to her heart, as embedded within the fiction is the actual story of her grandmother's immigration to America, alone from Russia at the age of 16. June marks the release of Gaby's second essay in a Seal Press anthology, this one is titled The Maternal is Political; Woman Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change, which also includes a piece by the late Benazhir Bhutto. Gaby's essay, "Making a Minyan in Vermont" takes place in Montpelier and in Jerusalem, Israel, where Gaby lived for several years, and was originally written while she was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson. Gaby feels it is marvelously synchronistic, being published just at the time of Israel's 60th birthday. Gaby has been invited to read at the Rochester, New York Barnes and Noble, one of the largest in the country, and hopes to set up some readings in Vermont. She has been working on a novel set in Vermont; the first draft was written during the November National 'Write a Novel in a Month' Challenge and was featured in the Times Argus article, "I Can't Write No Mo'". And for the June 6th Art Walk at Lazy Pear Gallery in Montpelier, Gaby opens a show which she co-curated: Odd Babies: Four Artists Explore the Doll. Gaby will show fetishes, mixed media, and sawdust smoked sculptural figures loosely based on the doll form. She states they are more about gesture, a lot of psychological underpinnings from her many years as a psychotherapist, and literary reference. Also in the show is North Carolina artist Tiffany Ownbey and Chris London from Hartford, Connecticut, both of whom have shown at Gaby's gallery, as well as Beth Robinson, who is in the Lazy Pear "stable" along with Gaby.
Gaby feels she has the best of all worlds. Her work at Second Spring keeps her challenged and gratified professionally with a schedule flexible enough to maintain a creative focus. The only thing lacking, she states, is time to work on politics and get ready for the Vermont State convention; Gaby is the Brookfield delegate for Hillary Clinton.
Please contact Gaby at the above numbers with any further questions