SIRENS CATALOGUE 2020 by eleanorhubbard

SIR EN SONG Eleanor Hubbard is an astute artist masquerading as a bon vivant, one who respects Marcel Duchamp as a fellow iconoclast. Whether working in two dimensions or three, Hubbard never fails to display her intoxication with color’s zing, line’s quirks, precarious balance and, perhaps most of all, serendipity. Surprises abound in the inventive imagination of an artist for whom all living creatures play a central role, especially those undervalued, neglected or abandoned. In the midst of the #MeToo movement, a memory suddenly flared up of drawings she had made of child prostitutes nearly four decades ago, then set aside, almost forgotten. In 1982, Hubbard and her husband, Geoffrey White, were driving through Los Angeles using an architecture guidebook. While he was looking for unusual buildings, she was busy sketching palm trees as they whizzed by. Approaching Hollywood Boulevard, traffic slowed and they were suddenly stuck in the middle of a loud, rowdy mob. More than a dozen naked girls, perhaps as young as 11 and no older than 16, were shouting, “Freedom!” Several approached their car, knocking on the window, offering themselves for money. The only one wearing clothes -- an ill-fitting, tattered prom dress -- spotted Hubbard’s drawing materials on the dashboard. “Draw me!” she demanded. Stunned, Hubbard obliged and, flush with adrenalin, drew furiously as the vacant-eyed marcher looked on. Others began to lurch closer, striking provocative poses and screaming at her. One proudly sported a baby blue beret and nothing more. Another stood stock still, repeating, “I’m underwater, I’m underwater.”An agitated redhead complained she was being attacked by flies and bees, but Hubbard detected no pests. Who could argue that these brutally sexualized “Sirens” were not drowning, were not under assault? Back in her hotel room, the unnerved artist continued to work well into the night adding watercolor to these sketches. “Transforming them into art was the only way I could process this experience,” Hubbard says now. At home, she carefully stored the “Sirens” between the pages of a linen-bound portfolio, bought in Paris ten years earlier, a treasured souvenir she had always thought too special to ever use. There they safely stayed until recently re-surfacing to join the present day parade of #MeToo survivors. To reanimate her spur-of-the-moment imagery, Hubbard has recreated the 4.5x4.5-inch original sketches as six-foot, life-size, fully frontal nudes. She drew each figure on a sheet of French archival paper of a different texture -- rough, medium, or smooth – to endow them with personas. She further rescued them from oblivion by composing a mini profile for each girl, reclaiming their lost innocence by naming them after fragrant flowers: Gardenia, Lily, Violet, Peony… While this exhibition illuminates the crisis of child trafficking, it also gives voice to nine far too worldly girls who are not forgotten. The artist intends their images to be confrontational and have substance; by placing the over-scale figures slightly away from the gallery walls, each one casts a shadow. “If they were hung flat against the wall, they would be emotionally inaccessible,” Hubbard says. “To have a shadow is to be real.” Ann Jarmusch Contributor to ARTnews, Arts, Réalités, Town & Country, and other magazines, books and newspapers Sedona, Arizona January 2020

Cover: Detail of Individual SIREN Drawings 2

PEONY Colored pencil on archival paper 5”x 4.25” 1982

MARIGOLD Colored pencil on archival paper 12”x 9” 1982

AMARYLLIS Colored pencil on archival paper 6” x 4.75” 1982

LILY Colored pencil on archival paper 5.5â&#x20AC;?x 4â&#x20AC;? 1982

SIRENS IN TRAFFIC: INTERVIEW with ELEANOR HUBBARD

Ann Jarmusch: What did you think when you were visiting Los Angeles and your car was stopped by shouting, naked girls? Eleanor Hubbard: My first thought on seeing this nude parade was that it was a Happening. What else could it be? I had been a student of John Cage at Cornell (in 1967), and, though always clothed, I’d participated in a number of spontaneous art events at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Here was the West Coast version of Dada! AJ: What else stands out in your memory of this mob scene? EH: While parading and knocking on car windows, these young girls kept shouting, “Freedom!” and several carried signs with that word. What could it mean? Neurologist Oliver Sacks comes to mind, because he wrote about the intersection of fate and freedom. As brainwashed captives, these were child sex slaves in bondage to a tattered god, their pimp. They knew nothing of freedom. Most horrifying were their eyes. Beneath clumsy makeup they had no sparkle, only the flatness one sees in death. It was profoundly sad. AJ: You drew the girls very fast, unlike your usually methodical practice, right? EH: Yes, in the frantic heat of the incident, normal artistic control went out the window! So much happened at once. They came toward us like a tsunami, the way a rogue wave washes over a beach, sudden, uncontrollable, and without coherence. The energy of that visceral experience was paramount; I was compelled to work fast like a reporter. These are finger-flying drawings straight from the id. AJ: How did the “Sirens” affect your process? EH: In process, my work is all exactly the same, one painting made in hundreds of different variations. Some look whimsical and some look representational, but in essence it’s all the same: an obsession with the energy of making and of materials. I have always chosen my subject matter, except that in this case the “Sirens” chose me. AJ: How was it transforming your small, frenetic sketches into six-foot “Sirens” that would tower above the girls they represent? EH: At this much larger scale, the energy is entirely different. Instead of finishing a drawing in a day or a week, redrawing each “Siren” required four weeks. My energy had to be proportioned differently: the original fierce intensity became sustained intention. The 1982 drawings are direct, instinctual responses, while the expansive 2020 drawings were created with concentrated attention to detail. There is a seismic shift in the retelling.

AJ: Why did you want to create an exhibition for the “Sirens”? EH: I have a voice. I wanted to give these loud but unheard children a voice. AJ: Do you think this exhibit will have a voice? EH: Art can toggle our non-verbal memory switch; it can express shock and revulsion. But art does not change a situation or tell us what to do. In each of these United States, children are being bought and sold daily. All these drawings can do is to shine light on this tragedy. In that sense, they are flashlights. AJ: It seems this bizarre, emotionally wrenching and frightening experience still has a strong hold on you. EH: I recently had an epiphany: I think we can agree that everything artists make is some form of self-portrait -- but not these drawings. They’re entirely different, as if created on a planet without free will. How do I see these twenty-second sketches? They’re guardians of memory. Proust had his Madeleines, cookies triggering memories of his cosseted childhood. The “Siren” drawings trigger the memory of childhoods silenced into emotional extinction. In fact, looking back on the drawings they seem like Extinction Notices: perfect expressions of persons denied expression. AJ: Now, 38 years later, what do you think happened to these girls? EH: I fear most didn’t make it, that they fell to drugs, despair, or disease. If she survived, the girl in the blue beret might be 54 now. In studying my original sketches and creating the enlarged images for this exhibition, each member of the chorus has become quite real to me. I still hear them. Ann Jarmusch January 2020

ASTER (detail) Colored pencil on archival paper 7.5”x 6.75” 1982

Eleanor Hubbard ARTIST’S STATEMENT Whatever power an artist has is in giving voice to an abstraction, and without the crutch of language making that abstraction visible. My exhibition, Sirens, focuses on human trafficking, an abstraction made visible by Peony, Marigold, Gardenia, Aster, Lily, Violet, Jonquil, Amaryllis, and Rose. The viewer is left to carouse between reality and the imagination.

1980 1979 1977

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020 2018 2017 2015 2014 2012 2010 2007 2005 2003 1998 1995 1983 1980 1977 1977 1977

“Sirens,” Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York “440 Days in the Life of José, the Miraculous Ox,” Carl Milles Studio, American Academy in Rome, Italy “Natural Selection,” School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia “Organic Matters,” Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, New York “Just One Look,” Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York “Feline Fragments,” American Academy in Rome, Italy “Ox Tales,” Cibolo Creek Ranch, Marfa, Texas “Painted Norway,” Gallerie Tone, Oslo, Norway “Seeing Things,”Etherington Fine Art, Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts “Recent Work,” Craven Gallery, West Tisbury, Massachusetts “Poetic License, A Visual Autobiography,” Lori Bookstein Fine Arts, New York “Here and There,”Gålå Gallery, Gålå, Norway “Académie Voleu,” Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut “Transatlantic Tightropes,” America Now, Budapest, Hungary “Cut Ups,”Nexus Gallery, Philadelphia “Eleanor Hubbard,” Morris Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia “On the Tightrope,”Hundred Acres Gallery, New York

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2004 2000 1997 1996 1995 1990 1987 1983 1980

“Americans Abroad,” organized by the United States Art in Embassies Program, Washington, DC for Ljubljana, Slovenia “Watercolor,” Featherstone Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts “Twentieth Century American Selections,”Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York “Square Bubbles,” Mandeville Gallery, Union College, Schenectady, New York “American Selections,” Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York “Penn Prints: 30 Years of Printmaking at the University of Pennsylvania,” Arthur Ross Gallery, Philadelphia “Rendezvous,”Alliance in the Park, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia “Nexus Retrospective,” Peale House Gallery, Philadelphia “ Made in Philadelphia III,” organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia for the Governor’s Mansion, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

1975 1974 1971

“Seven Artists,” Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York, Purchase “With a Smile,” Marian Goodman Gallery, New York “Contemporary Issues: Works on Paper,” organized by Women’s Caucus for Art, Los Angeles and circulated to Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and Sarah J. Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Texas “Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School,” Art Institute of Chicago “Made in Philadelphia II,” Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia “New York Graphic Workshop Retrospective,” Museo des Belles Artes, Caracas

SELECTED INSTALLATIONS, PERFORMANCES, AND PUBLIC PROJECTS 2012 1995

1994 1987 1987 1983 1980 1980 1978 1978 1978 1976 1973

“Icons of the Vegetarian Food Pyramid,” American Academy in Rome “Art of the State: Pennsylvania ’95,” organized by the Greater Harrisburg Arts Council and the State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania “Eleanor Hubbard & Geoffrey White, You are Here,” The Artfront Project: An Urban Storefront Transformation, Philadelphia “Eleanor Hubbard & Geoffrey White, Rendezvous,” Alliance in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia “Eleanor Hubbard & Night Riders,” Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia “Einar, Sculpture: Penn’s Landing,” Port of History Museum, Philadelphia “Transatlantic Tightropes,” United States Department of State, Washington DC, for “America Now” exhibit, Budapest, Hungary “Eleanor Hubbard Slide Show, Street Sites: Windows,” Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia “L’Estampe d’Aujord’hui,” Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France “Connecticut Painting, Drawing & Sculpture,” organized by Art Resources of Connecticut and circulated to three institutions in the state “Contemporary Drawings: Philadelphia II,” Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia “The Bird and The Dirt: Performance,” Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia “Artists’ Books,” Pratt Graphics Center, New York and University Museum, University of California, Berkeley

FILM SCREENINGS 2020 2015 2014 2012

“Tiger Tales, Chat D’Oeuvres 5,” Anthology Film Archives, New York “The Cat Came Back, Chat D’Oeuvres 3,” Anthology Film Archives, New York “Art Imitates Cat, Film Festival Anemic CinéChat,” Palais de Tokyo, Paris “Art Imitates Cat, Chat d’Oeuvres 2,” Anthology Film Archives, New York

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

SELECTED CATALOGUE ESSAYS

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris The Korman Corporation, Trevose, Pennsylvania Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania The Lee Foundation, Gladwyne, Pennsylvania Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania And numerous private collections in the United States and Europe

Cleveland, David A. Eleanor Hubbard, Organic Matters, Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, 2015 Morse, Martha, A Modern Day Wunderkammer, The Insect Art of Eleanor Hubbard, Seeing Things, Etherington Gallery, Vineyard Haven, 2006 Robertson, Ambassador Thomas B., American Artists, United States Embassy, Ljubljana, Art in Embassies Program of the US Department of State, 2005 Iossel, Mikail, Square Bubbles, Mandeville Gallery, Union College, Schenectady, New York, 1996 Fine, Ruth, Recalling The Print Studio of the 70s and 80s, Penn Prints, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1990 Nakazato, Hitoshi, Thirty Years of Printmaking at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Prints, University of Pennsylvania, 1990 Waldman, Diane, Alliance in the Park, Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1987 Frank, Peter, A Contemporary Artist’s Book Exhibition, Words & Images, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Harrisburg, 1981 Shopmaker, Laurence, Seven Artists, Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York at Purchase, 1980 Marincola, Paula, Street Sites, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1980 Boyle, Richard J. and Ann Percy, Contemporary Drawings II, Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1979 Mann, Virginia, Connecticut Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, Art Resources of Connecticut, New Haven, 1978 Delehanty, Suzanne, Made in Philadelphia 2, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1974

SELECTED EXHIBITION REVIEWS Cleveland, David A., The Art of Eleanor Hubbard, Web Blog Post, ARTSY, 2014 Graver, David, Eleanor Hubbard: Just One Look, Web Blog Post. Cool Hunting, 2014 The Fisherman and His Wife, Publisher’s Weekly, 1998 Notes, Footnotes, Noting…, Artes Visuales, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 1980 Jarmusch, Ann, Lucky Seven, Neuberger Museum of Art, Realities Winter 1980: 111 Shirey, David, On the Tightrope, The New York Times, 1980 Jarmusch, Ann, Eleanor Hubbard, Art News, 1978 Lyle, Anthony, Fear and Surrender at a Gallery Opening, Made In Philadelphia 2, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia, 1974 BIOGRAPHY Eleanor Hubbard was born in Middlebury, Connecticut. She received an AAS from Bennett College in Millbrook, New York, a BA and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Hubbard also studied at the University of Oslo, and did graduate work toward a PhD in Medieval Studies at Cornell University. She is the recipient of several honors and awards from such agencies as The Ford Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Mabel Pew Myrin Trust, The Dietrich Foundation, The City of Philadelphia, and the Lee Foundation. While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Hubbard founded Institute Voleu, a platform for creative and humanitarian initiatives.

Photo Credit: Lynn Christoffers