WE ARE HUBBY, a curated artobiography
Welcome to the bare naked curation of my own life through art. I am re-membering stories that have shaped me and am asking different makers to interpret them through their own creative lens. I’ll also be inserting projects I’ve already brought to life thus far. I envision this adventure will culminate in a celebration of all the resulting art and some kind of book, creating something completely unexpected, and much less auto than most auto-biographies.
I will be sharing and bringing this to life over a years time - it will be a multi-layered exploration of art, personal and community history, loves and losses, themes and eurekas, with friendships and collaborations as the launching pad.
Laura Rodrigues is joining me on the studio visits as a treasured ally to help shape this multi-layer cake of interactions that is sparking new art.
So far (this number will grow), these admired creatives and their themes and or chapter titles, are:
Cal Clements - Charting; Chelsea Dean - Girl power; Jay Erker - The Tar Creatures; Tricia Gabriel - TBD; Barbara Gillespie - Nefertweetie. And the fire hydrant chapter; Emma Gray - Baroness of the Trees; Tanya Haden - Wine is not a breakfast food; Bolyn Hubby - What You Seek, You Find, Tyler Hubby - Red Velvet Anatomical Dream'; Monica Orozco - The Fool / Wild Card, and broken bones; Kent Osborn - Magnetic Magi; Ron Regé Jr - Ayahuasca + We Are Hubby Cover Art; Amy Russell - Family Vacation; Vness Santos - My Grade School spaceship + ZaZar’s transmission; Florian Stadler - TBD; Erica Ryan Stallones - Couple’s portrait; Randi Steinberger - Memory; Gillian Stoddart - Dig the Dig; William Stone - Dad, his kinda guy; Gabriela Tollman - The Anger Project; Shelli Tollman - Rascal, the Overlasting Cat; Chris Valdheim - Kintsugi; Nicola Vruwink - Barbie’s Leg + The Surrey Shoppe; Senon Williams - Mississippi Snow Queen; Tim Adams - Tarot
Writers: Rose Apodaca - TBD; Tracy Flannigan - Ben Hubby’s Christmas; ; Anne Marie Grewal - TBD; Lea Lion - The Temple of the Trees; Stephanie Schwam - interview; Savannah K. Smith - TBD
Cheers to growing it together, and…
Love to all the pARTs, Bettina
Ron Regé Jr: My first Ayahuasca vision
Kicking off my first collaboration for the upcoming artobiography with none other than Ron Regé Jr. Years ago I found his book The Cartoon Utopia at the Philosophical Research Society, and it’s been my dog-eared, wisdom-packed, mind-expanding companion ever since.
So when it came time to honor one of the most soul-shifting experiences of my life, an ayahuasca ceremony that shifted everything, I was drawn to ask him to translate the ineffable. I had never met him, so this was an out of the blue request, so I am especially thankful for the resulting alchemy.
This is the beginning of many such collaborations: artists I admire interpreting stories from my life through their own genius. Together we’re building a book, a show, and a memory map made of art, where the personal is translated and revealed anew.
Studio visit #1 - Vness Santos: My Gradeschool Spacepod Fantasy
Vness Santos, artist, mystic, herbal magician, Reiki healer, and ecological angel, welcomed me into their home with arms wide, and gifted an experience of cosmic clarity.
Their artwork is deep, mystical, playful, and to a very large extent, other worldly. Time flew by as we dove into shared topics of excitement, such as, extra-terrestrial contact, animal and plant communication, frequency medicine, and the invisible world. Home sweet home.
I shared a story from my childhood for Vness to reinterpret — a spaceship my grade-school mind divined, a mix between the James Bond underwater romantic escape pod and the I Dream of Jeanie bottle (look it up young ones).
They complemented the scene by sharing their own childhood experience: a cosmic encounter with benevolent blue beings, adding new color to the dream.
I left in my borrowed fairy dress with V's wonderful tincture for added clarity and a Pink Cuddle, the liquid hug my soul needed.
Studio visit #2: Shelli Tollman, Rascal, the Everlasting Cat
We enjoyed a front row seat into Shelli’s surreal and sumptuous world. Her art portrays a carnival of uniquely expressive characters that coexist in vivid spaces filled with magic and mayhem. During our visit, Shelli’s empathic gifts were crystal clear. As as a deep listener and alchemist of childhood tumult, her art is a blend between the raw, the real, and a reclaiming of childlike wonder. Her candy floss infused palette softens past realities.
That’s why I entrusted her with a story of my father and his attempt to nurture our childhood cat for decades longer than nature would have wanted. Between surgeries and blood transfusions, Rascal The Everlasting Cat, remained alive for a new world record.
However she re-dreams this memory of mine through her multidimensional lens, surely she’ll inject color and care into healing the Dr and giving one more life to the everlasting cat.
Admired quantum creator, Laura Rodrigues, is collaborating with me to bring this adventure into full-bodied flourish.
Studio visit #3: Tyler Hubby, The Red Velvet Anatomical Dream
Second cousin by blood, first cousin in mischief. There’s no mistaking our lineage. We share peculiar mannerisms, an unmistakable Hubby-brand mischievousness that has been perfectly yin-yanged in contrast. While Tyler has chuckled his way through macabre subject matter—death, discord, and aberration, I have focused on making lemonade art from life’s lemons. What makes it all the more interesting is that our shadow and light are blending. He is newly photographing flowers alongside skeletons, and I am opening up the closet of material where my skeletons have been stored.
An accomplished artist, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and lover of Halloween, he’s cultivated a body of work that weaves photography, art noise, character studies, experimental videos, punk rock, and documentary filmmaking.
His recent photo series, Facets, conjures William Burroughs’ spirit. Using a cut-up method, the portraits Frankenstein together multiple angles and perspectives of a single person. The result is monstrous and seductive—a form of spiritual portraiture where essence shines through the dis/re-assemblage.
No wonder must exist that for the Artobiography, I offered Tyler a flayed and fleshy vivid dream I had in my 20s to reinterpret.
I saw myself laid out on a gurney surrounded by surgeons in red velvet scrubs. Slowly, the red sheets covering me moved of their own accord, revealing bare skin that became a living canvas. The surgeons, holding paintbrushes instead of scalpels, rendered lush anatomical paintings across my body. This sparked a whole series of anatomical paintings on friends that I did in Athens, GA.
Tyler will surely do justice to this lucid dream with his potent signature style. Naturally, I wore my bone dress for the occasion, and Laura wore black.
Studio visit #4: Tanya Haden, Wine is Not a Breakfast Food
Tanya’s home is a canvas for art and wit, infused with hysterical interventions. From a wide-eyed cat to a little gremlin optically tucked within the brickwork, to a wonderful alt-news rendering of "The Alive Times." Please note: The naked frolicsome ladies who blissfully cavort on birds across the downstairs bathroom wallpaper are Tanya's Covid masterpiece. (No bird was left untouched.)
Tanya, Laura, and I ended up in the most fitting of places for our conversation about depression and art: the bed across from her studio. It felt like a daytime non-slumber party, equal parts raw, funny, and vulnerable. (Forgive the fuzzy shot—screen grabs have their own blurry poetry.)
I've asked one of the most artful people to capture one of the least artful periods of my life—unless you count blanket burrito-ing, wine for breakfast, and Netflix-glow marathons as performance art. Before I met myself more deeply, depression had often held me by the ankles; between a mayhem of meds and sloppy interventions, it took sheer willpower, and the tiniest of wins to crawl myself out of bed.
Which is why the realness and rawness behind Tanya’s work lands with such a knowing thud and some giggles (now that it's been processed). Her reimagined magazine ads are hilariously poignant, where high-end chairs and sloth itself are the main characters. When I first saw them, I laughed into my hands and wanted to crawl under the table to high-five Tanya for her brilliance.
Needless to say, I'm grateful that it's you, Tanya, the one that gets to capture the stuck-ness and the strangeness, messy beauty of being in that state.
