James T. Hubbell, an iconic local sculptor and artist whose organically inspired works can be found in homes, churches and public buildings throughout San Diego County and beyond, died on Friday at the age of 92.
Hubbell is perhaps best known for his other-worldly “habitable sculptures” compound in Santa Ysabel that he built by hand with his sons over many years. Due to health challenges, Hubbell and his wife, Anne, left their mountain home in 2021 to move into an assisted living community in Chula Vista, where he passed away peacefully with Anne and his family by his side.
Their property, which they deeded over to their 41-year-old nonprofit, the Ilan-Lael Foundation, in 2003, will carry on as an educational center, artists retreat and archive and museum for his work and legacy.
Roof line of the Big Studio at James Hubbell’s Ilan Foundation property in Santa Ysabel. This building was completed in 1965.
(Courtesy of John Durant)
Art and architecture fans from around the world fly in each year to walk through the imaginatively shaped buildings, which resemble the Hobbit houses in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films, and the expressionistic organic style of Modernist Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí. (Spring tour season began May 10 and continues through June 17.)
The Hubbells bought the Santa Ysabel ranch land in 1958 and gradually built a home and art compound there over many years while raising their four sons. When a wildfire destroyed half of the buildings on the property in 2003, the Hubbells placed the land in the trust of Ilan-Lael, and it has since been rebuilt and expanded.
Throughout his long career, Hubbell explored concepts in organic architecture and design that were a unique expression of San Diego.
The Santa Ysabel property was built to follow the natural lines of the land, with huge boulders incorporated into the buildings. The swooping roofs suggest leaves, shells and bleached bones. The property was built with local stones, wood milled in nearby Julian and adobe fired in Escondido and Tecate. Colorful mosaic designs flow across walls and floors like the stream that crosses his property. Stained-glass windows amplify sunlight, washing walls and floors with rainbows of dancing color. Door handles and cabinet drawer pulls were hand-forged with metal and manzanita tree burls.
In urban and suburban San Diego, James Hubbell created hundreds of public and private art installations. Highlights included the Pacific Portal gazebo and Pacific Rim Park’s Pearl of the Pacific on Shelter Island, a mosaic fountain at Coronado Ferry Landing, and numerous stained glass windows, gates, and mosaics in private homes, libraries, and churches throughout San Diego County.
Internationally, he gained recognition for collaborative design-build projects in Tijuana, B.C., Mexico, and a series of peace parks around the Pacific Ocean built expressly to bring together people from different cultures as a Pacific family.
James Hubbell photographed in the early 2000s at his self-designed art studio in Santa Ysabel.
(Courtesy of John Durant)
Hubbell was born Oct. 23, 1931, in Mineola, New York. Shy and struggling in school with traditional lessons, he turned to nature and art to make sense of his world. He drew nature’s patterns incessantly, finding solace in beauty. Even as a small boy, his drawing abilities drew the attention of his teachers.
Just out of high school he had a chance encounter with a man named Quentin Keynes, grandson of Charles Darwin. Rather than head straight to college, Hubbell and Keynes spent a year traveling the world, including exploring the great works of art in Europe and studying the tribal cultures of Africa.
In 1951, he enrolled at the Whitney school of art in New Yorkand later studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan, where he majored in sculpture. Later he moved with his family to Rancho Santa Fe, where his mother purchased and renovated the Wishing Well Hotel in the mid-1950s. He served two years in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, not as a fighter but as a base artist. After his military service, he dedicated himself to art.
Hubbell told The San Diego Union-Tribune that his artistic influences included the principles of Frank Lloyd Wright, the expressionism of Antoni Gaudí (creator of the fantastical Sagrada Familia cathedral and Park Güell in Barcelona), the abstract forms of African sculpture and the meditative qualities of Buddhism.
After marrying the former Anne Stewart in 1958, he built them a one-room cabin in Santa Ysabel. Over the years that followed, their property would grow to 14 separate buildings that were connected by meandering paths. In 1968, the Hubbells’ home was featured in the Los Angeles Times, and was later the subject of a book by Otto Rigan in 1979. A KPBS documentary on his life and art would follow years later.
James Hubbell photographed in front of his Sea Ranch Chapel near Santa Rose, California.
(Courtesy of Michael Gerdes)
Hubbell became well known for his nontraditional stained glass works, curved metal work for gates and sculpture, hand-carved wood doors, colorful tile mosaics and imaginatively designed structures. In the 1970s, he created windows, doors and sculpture for the now-shuttered Triton Restaurants in San Diego and Cardiff. One of his best-known commissions is the whimsical Sea Ranch Chapel in Northern California, which was pictured on the cover of Progressive Architecture Magazine in 1985.
In 1990, he began working with San Diego activisit Christine Brady to build a kindergarten in Tiuana named Colegio La Esperanza. For the next 30 years he created mosaics and artwork for the school and volunteered his time with the students.
In 1983, the Hubbells started Ilan-lael — a Hebrew phrase meaning “tree that is a gift from God” — with the goal of bringing art to the masses. He launched the magazine, Hidden Leaves, and became a vocal advocate of securing and protecting open space and nature.
Through Ilan-Lael, Hubbell worked with arts students around the world to create the Pacific Rim Parks beginning in 1994. Hubbell designed the oceanside parks, distinctive for a huge pearl-like sculpture at each. Locations include San Diego, Tijuana, jeju Island in South Korea; Yantai, China; and Puerto Princesa, the Philippines.
Hubbell is survived by his wife, Anne, sons Torrey, Drew, Lauren and Brennan; three daughters-in-law, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. In his memory, Ilan-Lael Foundation has established The James Hubbell Memorial Art Fund. A public memorial service is in the planning stages.
Hubbell talked openly in recent years about the approach of his death, which he saw as a natural process that all living creatures must face with an open heart. As a result, he left written instructions of what he wanted done with his cremated remains.
“Upon death, my ashes will be scattered from the hillside chapel of our property that faces southwest toward the San Dieguito River. Water from Volcan Mountain follows this river about fifty-five miles before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. My ashes containing my life’s elements will thus be united with the Pacific,” he wrote, adding that from there his ashes would follow the ocean current to South Korea’s Jefu Island and eventually end up as grist for a pearl in an oyster yet unborn. “There, the circle of one life is complete.”
pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
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