The new chapel at Ilan-Lael, artist James Hubbell's residence and artist compound. (Source: KPBS.org)
These Days San Diego‘s Maureen Cavanaugh talked with James about his projects, the annual open house, and the new chapel on his property in Santa Ysabel. Professor Stephan Haggard of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UCSD also joined the conversation.
Topics include sustainable building, the role of beauty in art, creating peaceful relationships between countries and cultures, and other thoughts on building and life, such as:
CAVANAUGH: How do you create music out of a building?
HUBBELL: I don’t know. I think you have to put it as a value that, you know, it’s just like the conference that we’re doing on beauty. It’s not really to define what beauty is but to see if it is becoming something that’s talked about in the culture and valued. And if it is, how do you use it? And so its sustainability or all of those things, if they’re values that are in your psyche, you just do it, you know. But if they’re things that are written down as regulations, you probably do it wrong.
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CAVANAUGH: I read where you said that you think that we might be heading towards a new romantic age. Why do you think that?
HUBBELL: Well, I think that we’ve been obsessed with control, you know, on everything from schools where you teach in order to get grades to genetics to politics. And I think that particularly recently we’re learning that we’re not really in control and that you have to celebrate mystery and celebrate things that just happen. Otherwise, you kind of destroy everything. So and, to me, that’s what the romantic is, it’s somebody that accepts that life isn’t something that you – you go from A to B to C, it takes you somewhere.
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You can listen to the interview and read the transcript on KPBS.org:
Artist James Hubbell Builds Park in South Korea
By Angela Carone & Maureen Cavanaugh
These Days San Diego
June 17, 2010
(Quotes and image excerpted from KPBS.org)
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