WE ARE HUBBY, a curated artobiography
Welcome to the bare naked curation of my own life through art and community. I am re-membering stories that have shaped me and inviting 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 the book and all the resulting art, creating something completely unexpected, and much less auto than most auto-biographies.
I will be bringing this to life over a year’s time; it will be a multi-layered exploration of art, personal and community history, loves and losses, themes, dreams, and eurekas, with friendships and collaborations as the launching pad.
The number of artists will grow to partner the number of stories written. So far, the admired creatives and their themes and or chapter titles, are:
Tim Adams - Tarot of We Are Hubbied; Cal Clements - Charting; Chelsea Dean - Kaleidoscopic Queens; Debbi Dachinger; Jay Erker - The Tar Creatures; Tricia Gabriel; Barbara Gillespie - Nefertweetie + fire hydrants; 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 Anatomy; Madeleine James; Joslyn Lawrence; Kelly Martin; Monica Orozco - The Pilgrim + The Fool / Wild Card; Kent Osborn - Your words are your wand; Ron Regé Jr - Ayahuasca + We Are Hubby Cover Art; Amy Russell; Vness Santos - My Grade School spaceship + ZaZar’s transmission; Florian Stadler; Erica Ryan Stallones - Cosmic Couple Manifestation; Randi Steinberger; Gillian Stoddart; William Stone; TEO aka Madre Jaguar; Evelyn Tollman - The Stand Up Doll; Gabriela Tollman - The Anger Project; Shelli Tollman - Rascal, the Overlasting Cat; Chris Valdheims - Kintsugi; Nicola Vruwink - Barbie’s Leg + The Surrey Shoppe; Senon Williams - Ms. Mississippi
Writers: Tracy Flannigan - Ben Hubby’s Christmas Party; ; Anne Marie Grewal; Lea Lion - The Temple of the Trees; Stephanie Schwam - interview
Laura Rodrigues is joining me on studio visits as a treasured ally to help record this multi-layer cake of interactions that is sparking new art.
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.
This image is a digital collage I created picturing my younger self hovering over Cathedral Day School with one of my classmates, who has now become my friend.
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.
This is a digital collage I created to show the strange scene my sister and I were met with one day when we came home from school: Rascal, secured by our Dad to the ironing board, receiving a blood transfusion.
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 explored life’s lemons with a lemonade lens. 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 flooding light into the closet 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, and 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. My collage here is a glimpse of how that dream felt.
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 T’s 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.
Studio Visit #5: Jay Erker, The Tar Creatures
The first Erker project that embedded on my radar was Invitation to Collaborate: Art Work (2013). They invited artists to send them instructions for art-making or performance that Jay would then fulfill at their full-time office job. A genius and playful jailbreak from cubicle life that blossomed into a hive of communal creativity.
Jay’s bio alone gives you a taste of their generous, multifaceted presence: Jay Erker (THEY/she) is a Los Angeles-based non-binary multidisciplinary artist, meditator, Unified Mindfulness coach, and social justice-oriented psychotherapist who has exhibited and performed in the U.S. and abroad for years - with the added delightful nickname: Janitor of Lunacy.
Recently, Jay performed a therapeutic ritual exchange called Psychic Tenderness, an offering up of care, connection, and yes, actual TENDERNESS as a part of LA Road Concerts at the Rim of the World. Yes, I want a t-shirt. Jay made the dress, the blanket, and the T-shirts gifted to each participant.
During our layered conversation at their plantful and playful home, we buzzed around Jay’s pulped paper sculptures - the art that connects to my unfolding book adventure. To me, these forms embody a balance between inner light and magik, and the denser aspects of being human. Jay’s are more visually harmonious than the sculptures I made in college that were once dubbed “The tar creatures.” At the time I saw them as humorous in their rawness, cute even. I look at this collaboration as quantum healing for those creatures of mine.
Jay’s titles alone reveal extra dimensions: O Primordial, Guardian of the Green Way - and other favorite titles (not pictured): I Am a Wild Beast, I Am That, Darkness Dreaming Light. Please accept casual images. Full glory will be in book form! Gratitude to Laura Rodrigues for documentation and bringing pure gold perspectives on the psyche at play in the material.
Pictured to the left is one of my tar creatures held in the arms of my Dad.
Studio Visit #6, Chris Valdheims, Kintsugi
Kintsugi, translated as Golden Joinery, is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery, and carries a deep spiritual meaning. Chris writes, “Kintsugi involves sitting with the things that are uncomfortable or pushed under the rug. By bringing them to the forefront, we can convert them into fuel for transformation. Along the way, I learned how to look into darkness and find the gold.” One of his pieces is aptly titled Amulet to Turn Darkness to Gold.
Chris is a burgeoning visual artist receiving newfound downloads through calligraphy, and there is much more up his tattooed sleeve (depicting the Latvian god of thunder, Pêrkons, who inspires decisive action). He is a speaker, podcaster, writer, musician/DJ, lawyer, and co-founder of Counsel for Creators (the first legal membership for creators). He is also newly studying to become a certified breathwork facilitator.
He began with words and quotes written in expert calligraphic gestures that merge past and present, transcending the literal message. His works are alchemical and mesmerizing to watch come into being. He says the text emerges from light or dark energy that invite an answer, becoming the architecture that holds the response.
In my 20s and 30s, I filled notebooks with drawings, unaware of the unprocessed darkness within them. When I unearthed them decades later, I found them hard to face. I almost burned them ceremoniously but was compelled by a vision to restore instead of erase. I’ve been “golding” them up to honor my perfect imperfections; now my scars gleam. And thus, the connection with our art.
We spoke with Chris over Zoom while he was in Croatia, where he now lives and creates. A plethora of topics bubbled up alongside the above simpatico: being an outsider, becoming more vulnerable and visible, solitude and isolation, mind metaphysics, his Latvian grandfather, authenticity, and self-forgiveness. The Kintsugi of our talk was evident, and I treasure it.
This is one of my newly gilt drawings from the past (one of the tamer ones). It translates to In the beginning there was the Word, where Logos = Divinity.
