Iconic artist James Hubbell leaves behind a legacy of art across San Diego

Visionary local artist, sculptor, architect, designer and naturalist James Hubbell passed away on Friday, May 17. He was 92. Hubbell’s artistic touch is all over San Diego and beyond, with countless stained glass, mosaics, sculptures, gates and more peppering local libraries, churches, nature preserves, schools and other public spaces.

Hubbell was born in Mineola, New York and moved a lot in his youth. In 1958, he landed in Julian, CA, and lived there with his wife Anne in an extraordinary home and studio property nestled in the picturesque and wild mountains of San Diego County.

The region’s wilderness and nature was more than an inspiration for Hubbell’s work — it was essential.

Marianne Gerdes is a filmmaker and executive director of the Ilan-Lael Foundation, an arts education nonprofit founded by Hubbell and his wife Anne in 1982. Gerdes said that his relationship with nature touched everything — from botanical stained glass to sculptures on trailheads to architectural ideas of livable environments, education, peace and more.

“He didn’t copy nature in his art, but he certainly took the lessons he learned from his lifetime’s devotion to it — and expressing it in his form and in the way he would blend materials. He would point out that in nature, a tree and grass will grow next to a rock. They don’t keep separate. And so when he worked with materials, he would put, you know, brick with mosaic with stained glass… a floor becomes a wall, a wall becomes a roof in his designs,” Gerdes said.

Hubbell’s art can currently be seen in a major four-part exhibition that’s on view at four San Diego-area libraries. “James Hubbell: Architecture of Jubilation” includes a retrospective survey exhibition at the expansive 9th floor Central Library Art Gallery downtown, plus unique satellite exhibits at Scripps Miramar Ranch Library, Mission Valley Library and Otay Mesa-Nestor Library that each touch upon a distinct aspect of Hubbell’s career — from his home to the Pacific Rim Project to his work in Baja. The work will be on view through Aug. 4, 2024.

Peace and activism was pivotal in Hubbell’s practice. In a 1989 documentary series produced for KPBS, Hubbell spoke to how he viewed the role of the artist.

“The artist is the kind of person who, we all, when there’s problems we suffer with them, but the artist is the kind of person that has to make something from that. And so what he functions as is sort of the raw nerve for the culture, and he transfers that change which is going about into an object. Whether it’s pollution or overpopulation or war, he needs to — to reinterpret the myth of the culture. The problem that we’ve had is that the — we’ve treated the artist so much as a play toy to the rich that we haven’t made use of the gifts that the artist can give to all of us,” Hubbell said.

Gerdes said that peace and activism were important in his work, but so was making art accessible and egalitarian. He worked tirelessly creating public art, or installing art in schools and libraries. He also spent about three decades building a school in Tijuana’s Colonia Esperanza neighborhood.

Hubbell worked until his death, painting every day as an almost meditative practice — “His prayers,” Gerdes said. As his illness took hold, he could no longer physically create sculptures or mosaics, but he still worked with his team to design. The most recent piece to be installed just opened last month at the Alpine Library.

In Gerdes’ 2019 documentary, “James Hubbell – Between Heaven and Earth,” Hubbell reflected on a remarkable life’s work.

“I think my life is really about maybe bridging things, but it’s also just about making things,” Hubbell said. “I think artists are born with a certain vocabulary in their head and they just — you follow it or you get a chance to follow, and you’re lucky. I don’t think you have to know where you’re going, but I think you have to set a direction towards something. And hopefully it’s big enough so it’ll last your whole life, and even after.”

Gerdes hopes Hubbell’s legacy will stretch beyond his art.

“Jim’s art is more than just an object. It has a message behind it, which is about peace and beauty and the importance of all of us understanding and appreciating and hopefully seeking — as he did — seeking beauty in our own lives, opening ourselves to the possibilities of our own creativity or our own potential and and just embracing one another, you know in friendship because that’s what he did every day,” Gerdes said.