Visual artist Patrick Dean Hubbell joined a Zoom interview from outside, while helping to clear flood damage near his home in the Navajo Nation.
“We got hit pretty hard with the flooding and everything last night, so I try to be outside to help around and be involved with the roads and all that,” said Hubbell, whose exhibition “After Everything, You Embraced My Being Like A Warm, Gentle Breeze” is on view at the Tucson Museum of Art through March 21, 2027.
Hubbell’s home is critical to the artist, both in life and in art. Born and raised in the Navajo Nation, he inherited his artistic bent from his creative family, namely his father, a graphic designer and illustrator.
“So that kind of pushed me in the direction to be able to develop a way of seeing that my creativity and artistic ability were present,” Hubbell said.
But while nurturing his interest, he dealt with underfunded art programs and limited materials, he explained, and didn’t truly cut his teeth until pursuing his degree at Arizona State.
“Once I was able to go to undergrad and experience full studio classes and you know, that kind of environment, it really just kind of opened the door for me and my creativity to kind of flourish,” Hubbell said.
After finishing a master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he spent the past several years working and showing his art nationally and internationally.
But home eventually called him, so he moved back to the Navajo Nation, and with the help of his family, set up a studio there.
“It was ultimately my plan, but it was just kind of a matter of trying to develop a way to make it a reality, despite the limited resources, not only for real estate but really for arts resources in general, you know?
“It was a tough decision at first, but also being connected to our ancestral homeland on the Navajo Nation is a big part of my practice.”
Despite the lack of resources, materials lie at the forefront of Hubbell’s work. He draws attention to the presentation of his art: the stretching, distressing, draping and folding of canvases, as well as the incorporation of various textiles and materials.
That’s the aspect that initially spoke to Meg Jackson Fox, TMA’s chief of curatorial and convergent practice, when she saw Hubbell’s work on display in a Miami show.
“It’s just really unusual for you to have that kind of accumulation of material that is also acknowledged,” Jackson Fox said.
“That’s one of the parts that moves me about him, is that he acknowledges each material that’s in his work. You know, typically you have an artist, they use a wooden stretcher bar, as an example. No one acknowledges the stretcher bar, but it’s a choice, and it’s a material that’s a part of your process. So every single thing has an acknowledgment in his practice.”
What sealed the deal, for the curator, was the convergence of cultural symbolism and transformation in Hubbell’s work.
“His manner of mark-making I found very compelling,” Jackson Fox said. “That he incorporates long historic symbolism in addition to marks that he makes, too. So there’s this sort of intersection between what could be considered very much of a tradition and then also very much innovative.
“And those are really two difficult things to incorporate into a single practice.”
Hubbell explained that he often begins with “references of symbology,” or indigenous pattern making, the kind found in indigenous textiles, beadwork, basketry and pottery.
“I kind of developed my practice to incorporate those, but more in a gestural mark-making approach, that kind of encapsulates those references, but also in more of an immediacy and urgency to create work.”
From the initial “Indigenous perspective,” Hubbell then moves into a conceptual approach, pulling together different eras and schools of painting, and then considering how the viewer engages with the work through its materials and points of entry.
“Things of that nature that have their own historic visual language,” Hubbell said. “But then also offer a new perspective into ways of presenting work that also has an openness through the abstract language of contemporary art.”
Jackson Fox points to the piece “Each New Day Brings Challenges, Your Words Fortify Our Spirit” as an “anchor” for the exhibition that displays Hubbell’s symbols and markmakings, including those made by his own children.
Beyond the exhibition, Hubbell is the inaugural artist of TMA’s new Sonoran Project, a series in which the museum commissions site-specific pieces in an effort to “be generative and amplify artists,” Jackson Fox said. Each installation will be on display for two years at the Mooney Hall entrance.
“It was nice to work on that scale for the first time,” Hubbell said. “And then also, it was nice to be able to be invited to do that specific work for the museum.”
The series invites artists to create work “critically and creatively investigating the Sonoran desert,” Jackson Fox explained. When organizing the project, she thought of Hubbell, whose work already concerns itself with land and earth materials.
“This was, in my mind, a chance for him to work on a different scale, and create a new piece that was already part and parcel of his practice of thinking about the land,” Jackson Fox said.
“So, to me, it has a kind of fundamental presence in his work and in his life.”
And, you know, the commission is exciting because it is so muscular. It’s monumental in the space, and the kind of presence that it articulates and demands is, to me — I mean, when I first walked in and they first put it up, I was in tears. It moved me so much.”
