‘To Tell Tall Tales’

Will Hubscher recycles people in his work on view at the Artists’ Gallery.

By: Susan Van Dongen
   Heads up, anyone with shoeboxes filled with old family photos. Those snapshots are getting to be worth big bucks to contemporary artists and collectors of "found photography."
   Multi-media artist Will Hubscher says vintage photos have risen steeply in price, from less than a dollar apiece to as much as several hundred dollars.
   For the last few years, he’s been seeking them out, incorporating images into his quirky multi-media works, which are on view in To Tell Tall Tales at the Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville through Dec. 4.
   Mr. Hubscher starts his creative process by selecting an unusual old photo, something that jogs a memory, provokes an emotion, enchants or disgusts but somehow draws him in.
   He gets these anonymous snapshots from local and far-flung flea markets, old collections from friends and family and, more often now, from the Internet. The oldest photo Mr. Hubscher has worked with was taken in 1869.
   For Tall Tales, Mr. Hubscher chose images that are poignant, elegant, mysterious and comical. For example, there’s the man happily shaving in his canoe, face covered with soap, a scenic body of water in the background. In another, we see a fellow meander through the city streets with a chicken on his head.
   Three friends in natty tab collars, vests and bowler hats play at fisticuffs in another work. Then there’s the young couple reclining romantically on a fence in the countryside and the boy banging a bass drum.
   "I don’t tell stories with nouns and verbs and adjectives," he writes in his artist’s statement. "I speak with concept and color and texture. Through each piece, a new history is built with greens, blues, violets and golds. A storyline is added with darkness and light. The final chapter is literally pressed onto the paper, both figuratively and literally. A new truth is born — a visual tale to consider, to ponder, to deride or to enjoy."
   Employing a complex process that is part photography, part graphic arts and printmaking, Mr. Hubscher creates works that are equally enchanting and puzzling but all done with meticulous execution.
   "My artwork is built upon the lives of people and places once here, but now long gone," he writes. "The discards of people’s lives have always fascinated me, especially these photographic, printed, histories of their own past.
   "At one time, someone somewhere thought enough of them to catalog their place in time," he continues. "And now that time is gone, just as our own time is gone after the moment we’ve lived it. So I happen upon a face, a moment, a situation that catches my eye or tugs at my soul, or revives a memory of my own, and I acquire this snapshot-in-time in order to free it from its demise."
   To create the monoprints, Mr. Hubscher scans the images into the computer, tinting the black-and-white photos with whimsical colors, then printing them onto lithograph paper. Once they’re on this new surface, he cuts them up, then runs them through an etching press with a transfer medium, which presses the image onto watercolor paper.
   "That’s where all these textures and (color) bleeds come from," he says. "Depending on how wet or dry I make it, the print always comes out differently. To finish the process, each piece is coated with a non-yellowing lacquer spray that sets the inks to inhibit any chance of fading."
   The collection at Artist’s Gallery is a new body of work. Mr. Hubscher made 13 prints since the end of September.
   When he started about five years ago, he was doing a more simplified version of the process, and was working more with nudes, playing with teasing antique postcards from the turn of the 20th century.
   "I wasn’t doing the layering like I am now," Mr. Hubscher says. "With the layering, the picture is still whole, but this brings it out of its two dimensions so it almost has a three-dimensional feel to it."
   Self-trained as an artist, Mr. Hubscher was working in marketing communications for Telcordia, which created software for the national telephone system, until a sweeping layoff caused him to re-assess his priorities. When a friend gave him an etching press and told him to "really start living," Mr. Hubscher poured himself into an art form that keeps evolving with every new series of works.
   Just since 2000, Mr. Hubscher has participated in juried and invitational shows at the Hunterdon Museum of Art, Gallery 31 North in Glen Gardner, the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts in Summit, as well as Connexions Gallery in Easton, Pa., Lamp Art Gallery in Chicago, the New York City Gay and Lesbian Center and the Plastic Club in Philadelphia.
   His works also hang in a variety of eateries in the area, including Atrio Cafe in Lambertville. Mr. Hubscher lives in a 100-year-old farm house in Stewartsville.
   He’s pleased with the growing interest in his multi-media works — The New York Times just featured "The Divine Shave of Man’s Existence" with a blurb promoting the Lambertville show in its weekend arts calendar.
   Although it wasn’t his intention, Mr. Hubscher seems to have gravitated to early 20th century images. Perhaps because photography was still a new technology and folks weren’t used to it, or had to be very still for the camera, some of the subjects have a "deer in the headlights" look.
   "They didn’t seem interested in the camera, especially in the European pictures," Mr. Hubscher says. "These people weren’t posing. They were just there."
   The photos he acquires are all black and white. Mr. Hubscher imagines the colors, many of which are vivid. He doesn’t go out looking for pictures with a specific idea in mind — he just waits for the image to touch him in a certain way.
   "There has to be something with the character of the face, whether the person is pretty or ugly," he says. "There has to be something that attracts me to the picture. Some of them are a little more fun, some are more poignant or more spiritual depending on what I’m getting out of the picture."
   Although he does employ Photoshop and other software in the process, Mr. Hubscher doesn’t play with the photos, superimposing strange heads on unsuspecting bodies, for example.
   "I always keep the pictures intact," he says. "I don’t add any outside or new elements to the pictures, I try to keep the original intent, whatever that might have been. I like to keep the integrity of the photos.
   "I’m trying to pay respect to the subjects, to the people in the photos," he continues. "It’s like bringing them back. I feel like I’m recycling people."
To Tell Tall Tales, multi-media works by Will Hubscher, is on view at Artists’ Gallery, 32 Coryell St., Lambertville, through Dec. 4. Gallery hours: Fri.-Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. and by appointment. For information, call (609) 397-4588. On the Web: www.lambertvillearts.com. Will Hubscher on the Web: www.hubcaparte.com