Deirdre Hubbard is a sculptress whose work has frequently graced the Harold Martin Botanic Garden of this University as part of our “Sculpture in the Garden” summer exhibitions which the Vice-Chancellor mentioned earlier.
Deirdre Hubbard was born in New York City, the child of two practicing artists. She was educated at Harvard University where she studied English. Her main inspiration was poetry, which she studied with I. A. Richards and, briefly, Robert Lowell. She graduated summa cum laude (in our terms, with a first class degree) and was awarded the Sohier Prize for the best undergraduate thesis. In addition, for these were the days before political correctness and even Harvard ran beauty contests, she narrowly missed being elected Miss Radcliffe, the most beautiful woman at Harvard. As in many other cases, this was clearly a miscarriage of justice: Madam, the jury got it wrong.
Literature was never her only love, but shared her affections with art. In her spare time at Harvard she painted and studied with the painter Theodore Feininger. She also attended extra-mural life drawing classes. After her marriage and move to London, she decided to follow her artistic passion and enrolled in what was then the Chelsea School of Art and is now the University of the Arts, London. Here she discovered that sculpture drew her, inexorably. At this period, the late 1950s, British sculpture was dominated by Henry Moore, Bernard Meadows and Elisabeth Frink. Deirdre Hubbard was fortunate in having Meadows as one of her teachers and in being invited to work in the studio of Elisabeth Frink, who became a close friend, from 1963 until 1965.
Deirdre Hubbard began to exhibit her sculpture publicly in the early 1960s, with group exhibitions at the University of Essex, Lincoln Cathedral and many other venues. At this time she was also raising four children, so work went slowly until the late 1970s. In 1979 her sculpture “Benediction Bird” was the lead piece in a touring exhibition in aid of Amnesty International. Exhibitions, both group and solo, have continued in an unbroken chain since that date and her works now appear in many collections throughout the world. Since 2001 she has been a regular contributor to our own summer exhibition, “Sculpture in the Garden”, which annually transforms the Harold Martin Botanic Garden into a glorious and increasingly well-known focus for the natural and mutually enhancing relationship between nature and art. One of her sculptures, “Hybrid”, is permanently displayed in that garden.
The energy of the human form animates all her sculpture, although it is abstract. There are two distinct impulses that drive her work, which she describes as the Dionysian – building over-voluptuous forms; and the Apollonian – refining towards harmony. She produces the original model for casting in plaster, carving back and refining the form until she achieves the smoothest of surfaces and curves which are so precise that the point where convex meets concave is barely perceptible. Her intention is to achieve a harmonious interplay of curves and counter-curves. Even after the model has left her studio to be cast, she continues to work in close collaboration with the foundry, considering her input to be essential at every stage. The final cast in smooth bronze positively invites the touch of the viewer.
In 1981 Deirdre Hubbard became a Member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, the first non-British artist to be admitted. She was elected Fellow in 1999 and has also been a Trustee and Member of the Council of the Society. She fought hard and long, and successfully, to keep the Society in its own building. Her work at the Society has led her to become known as an ambassador for her profession.
Her life’s journey from literature to sculpture, from verbal to three-dimensional poetry, has not, in Deirdre Hubbard’s eyes, been illogical. To her, all art forms, whether music or poetry, painting or dance, the novel or sculpture, have certain fundamentals in common. This belief is expressed in the definition of “Art” which she wrote in a letter published in “The Jackdaw” magazine in April 2002: “Art is the deliberate arrangement of material, to please the senses, stir emotion and engage the mind. It is the vehicle by which private and transient experience may be rendered universal and permanent.” These words are as true of literature as they are of art.
Mr Chancellor, on the recommendation of the Senate and the Council, I present Deirdre Hubbard, that you may confer upon her the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters.