This website is dedicated to the memory and work of my late father, George Gillson. It is a compendium of his various works of art, writing and music.
My dad was an artist, writer, teacher, songwriter and juggler. He worked as a legal proofreader to earn a living, but his true joy was tinkering around in his art studio, surrounded by scraps of wood, old metal tools and cut-out photos of pin-up girls, or bulging bodybuilders. My dad was lucky enough to come of age in New York City when SoHo was transforming from an abandoned industrial zone into a cheap, thriving refuge for artists, writers, eccentrics and miscellaneous ne'er-do-wells.
Over the course of his long life, my dad made countless drawings and sculptures. He wrote limericks and philosophical essays. He even composed and recorded his own original songs. He wrote two books: Beyond the Cascade, a compendium of three-ball juggling tricks, and Spatial Ambiguity, a treatise on drawing which presents a grand unifying theory of visual aesthetics.
My father was Born in Jersey City in 1929 to first-generation Jewish parents of modest means. The family relocated to Worcester, MA, where my dad attended Clark University, graduating at nineteen because he had been pushed ahead two grades. In the 1960s, rudderless and bored in Boston, he read a Norman Mailer story about an artist living in a converted SoHo warehouse and decided to head south to New York City. He set up camp in a gymnasium-sized loft and discovered Abstract Expressionism amidst the mildewy milieu of freight elevators, cavernous factory spaces, DIY galleries, cheap wine and good cheese. He built his own furniture and wall partitions. He turned a second bathroom into a makeshift shower. He even taught an impromptu art class out of his loft. My mother insists that when she met my dad in 1974, he subsisted entirely on cans of tuna, Ballantine Ale, cigarettes and Hebrew National hot dogs. After his art class, my dad would light a cigarette and play old jazz standards on the piano.
In the mid-1980s, my father started juggling and quickly amassed a large repertoire of patterns and tricks. He invented his own notation for diagramming the arcs and movements of balls and hands, compiling his discoveries into a three-ball juggling book, which became a classic of its time.
My dad was dedicated to his creative work but never pursued a career in the arts. He had no stomach for constant rejection, high drama or social maneuvering. He was shy, sensitive and agoraphobic.
My father was determined not to follow in the footsteps of his own lackluster parents, whose failure to nurture him spawned his lifelong distaste for authority and its abuses, a theme he returned to over and over in his limericks. When I was a little kid, my father would play catch with me for hours. He would read me Calvin and Hobbes comics, explaining the jokes. He taught me to play chords on the piano as we sang the theme song from The Greatest American Hero.
One Halloween, he sewed a flawless Superman costume for me of a blue Capezio leotard, calmly wielding his X-Acto knife to carve a perfect red and yellow "S" out of felt, to my exact specifications. It was Hollywood quality. I was so proud of him.
I miss seeing my dad's silhouette in the doorway of my parents' apartment, leaning against the door frame with his white Andy Warhol hair, offering me a glass of seltzer or cranberry juice. I miss his beautiful hands, his extraordinary nose, his graceful body language. I miss the heaps of praise, his infinite tolerance for my weirdness and my own independent spirit.
It's hard to imagine such an avowed atheist floating in heaven watching over me, but sometimes I can sense my father's presence in the hollow drone of a wood instrument — a cosmic vibration. My dad loved non-Western music. He was deeply moved by rhythm and tone. He once told my mom he wanted to be reincarnated as a lizard, sunning himself on a wet, smooth rock. He had a catlike aura. Is his immortal soul now snugly ensconced in the body of an iguana or an ocelot? Who knows.
When someone dies, you cannot replace the love they gave you. My dad was never performative about family or tradition. He wasn't exactly a father "type," grilling burgers on Sundays or coaching a Little League team. He was an enigmatic loner who happened to get married and have a kid. But that was good enough for both of us, and we were sad to say goodbye to each other. I'm glad I got to know my dad, to be loved by him, and to share his work with the world.
Tavet Gillson
Brooklyn, NY
May 4, 2025
