Springfield vs. Dublin Coffman
Catholic Central vs. Seven Hills
Shawnee vs. Goshen
Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2009 > April > 24 > Entry
Missing a friend and arts lover
A few years ago when I was the editor in charge of arts and entertainment coverage, my mailbox overflowed with press releases, review CDs, books, faxes and more. I used to spend hours sorting it. After I’d had the job for a while, I started getting letters and postcards from Anne.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of Anne Hubler’s correspondence. It was frequent, and truly one of a kind. She saved postcards from long-past art exhibitions, for instance, and filled them with tight scribblings that wound up one margin and down the next. She sent tons of marked-up news clippings. Each time, she signed with a cheerfully lopsided little heart and “Anne.”
Hard as these missives were to dicipher, their content was always worthwhile. Anne was an artist, an arts lover, an arts follower and an arts supporter, and she shared her endless ideas on what was worth seeing and noting on the Dayton-area scene. She suggested stories, and pointed out trends. She offered encouragement about what she liked in our paper, and gently scolded when she thought we had undercovered some worthy event.
I soon learned Anne sent these to dozens and dozens of people around town. All our arts reporters got them, along with artists, donors, administrators. “I think she sent them to anybody she thought could make a difference,” says artist and sculptor Terry Welker of Kettering, who knew Anne for years. “It was flattering on one hand, informative on the other. She was a perennial clipper, and she felt these were important things that, by golly, everybody should join her on.”
“She was totally into recycling, reusing and repurposing things earlier than anyone else, I think,” said Oakwood’s Sharon Weltner, an art quilter.
That carried over into her art, too. Anne was a fiber artist of considerable talent, coming to artmaking later in life. She turned bits of fabric, sewn with the same tight complexity as her handwriting, into mosaic quilts that were quite beautiful. “She made impressionistic art quilts,” Weltner said. “Up close it was a mess, but if you stepped back, it came into focus. People brought her garbage bags full of fabric and scraps; she told me she never bought fabric on her own, and I admired that.” And she was a doer: general manager of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company early on, president of the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network, and more.
Anne showed up at everything — theater performances, gallery openings, receptions. I’d seek her out, looking forward to chatting about the work on display to see what I could learn. She knew everybody and had a great eye, along with a real depth of insight. She was always smiling.
A few years ago, Anne suffered a stroke about the time her husband died, and she quietly left her native Dayton to live with her daughters out of state. The postcards would occasionally arrive, but I really missed seeing Anne at the galleries. I wasn’t the only one.
She passed away at age 79 on April 13. In the DDN story on her, Dayton Visual Arts Center director Jane Black, a friend, said of Anne, “She was a rabble-rouser in the best possible way. She was always advocating for artists….”
I like to think she was also advocating for the rest of us, too. Anne Hubler understood, even before she was an artist herself, that being near art in whatever form is one of the things that makes life better and richer, and she wanted as many people to get that as possible.
I miss my friend. Here’s to her life and art, both inextricably linked, and both well done.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment |
Comments
By Marian Hubler
April 26, 2009 11:41 AM | Link to this
Hi Ron, I am Anne’s niece who lives in CA. I too received Anne’s letters & always wished I had time to write back with the same frequency & intensity. Anne made a quilt for me out of T-shirts from the events I produced in the 90’s. I think about her every day & share the value of being a culturally creative person & the depth it brings to one’s life. Marian Hubler, Novato,CABy Terry
April 26, 2009 10:47 AM | Link to this
Ron, thanks for sharing these thoughts about Anne. Anyone who ever received a note/clipping/encouragement/idea-bomb new she was living in the moment and that whatever we were sharing meant something and made a difference. Such fond memories…By vick
April 24, 2009 4:28 PM | Link to this
Ron, thanks for making such a lovely and well deserved tribute to a woman who really cared about culture. I was also the recipient of many types of Hubleresque correspondence. Anne sent me letters and postcards at WYSO for many years. But it was the phone calls that really made an impression. She called me to critique interviews and music that she heard on my program. She didn’t suffer fools. Her intellect was piercing and finely honed. She will be missed.