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By Miriam Raftery
May 20, 2024 (Santa Ysabel) – The world has lost a creative giant. Visionary artist and internationally acclaimed architect James Hubbell passed away on May 17 in Chula Vista at age 92, surrounded by family members including his wife, Anne.
“We’ve lost a great friend, a generous, creative talent, and an extraordinary man,” reads a statement issued by the Ilan-Lael Foundation, founded by Hubbell to inspire future generations of budding artists, architects and builders.
Hubbell designed hundreds of public and private artworks. Locally, his creations include the Pacific Portal gazebo and Pacific Rim Park’s Pearl of the Pacific on Shelter Island, the Triton Restaurants in San Diego and Carlsbad, Kuchumaa Passage, a public artwork at Rancho La Puerta Fitness Resort and Spa in Tecate, Mexico, and a mosaic foundation at Coronado Ferry Landing.
Internationally, he headed up efforts to create a series of international peace parks at locations rimming the Pacific Ocean. He also began a 30-year volunteer project to build Colegio La Esperanza, an elementary school embedded with mosaics to bring hope, education and beauty to students east of Tijuana, Mexico.
In a 2019 interview with East County Magazine at his famed Hubbell Home and studio in Santa Ysabel, Hubbell said his greatest inspiration was “nature. I’ve always understood nature.”
That love is evident at the Santa Ysabel compound just outside of Julian, a magical world where buildings appear to have sprouted from the landscape, complementing curves and forms found in nature, built of stone, wood and other natural materials. Hubbell’s works are punctuated 
by free-form mosaics that flow across floors and up walls, illuminated by stained glass that sends colorful prisms of light dancing across his creations. Thousands of visitors have flocked to Hubbell Home, which is open to visitors for tours each spring.
Born in New York in 1931, young Hubbell struggled in school, turning to art and nature as his artistic talent gained attention, according to the biography on the Ilan-Lael foundation website. He attended numerous schools including a military academy. After graduating from high school, he met Charles Darwin’s grandson and joined the young explorer on a trip to Africa and Europe, discovering great works of art and tribal cultural expressions. He later studied at Whiney Art School in New York and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, majoring in sculpture.
He moved with his family to Rancho Santa Fe, then served in the Korean War as a base mural artist, after telling his commanding officer that he couldn’t shoot anyone.
But it was in San Diego after the war that his architectural career was launched. Sim Bruce Richards, a former student of Frank Lloyd Wright and friend of Hubbell’s mother, teamed up with James Hubbell to redesign the Wishing Well Hotel that Hubbell’s mother owned. Charmed by Hubbell’s designs, Richards began including them in many of the homes he designed.
Hubbell joined arts groups, gaining introduction to other prominent architects. In 1955, his first one-man exhibit was featured in San Diego Magazine, which led to international shows.
In 
1958, he married Anne Stuart. The couple built a stone cabin with their own hands on land that later became a 14-building compound in Santa Ysabel. Hubbell’s works were soon featured in a book, a documentary by KPBS-TV, and in newspaper and magazine articles. His fame grew, vaulting him to international prominence, with 
speaking engagements around the world.
He won many awards, honors and lifetime achievement recognitions, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Institute of Architects, Rotary International, the United Nations Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, and the Pacific Coast Buildings Conference. His works have been featured on the Travel Channel and Home and Garden TV.
He and Anne launched their Ilan-Lael Foundation in 1983. In 1994, he began his Pacific Rim Park project, which has built eight parks to date in seven cities along the Pacific Ocean. Hubbell branched into filmmaking and writing children’s books, through is Tortoise Film and Publishing Co.
In A Tale of a Tortoise and a Butterfly, he observed that a tiny butterfly who thought she was insignificant could travel the world and imagine things that others could not.”After all,” he wrote, “imagination is like a tiny seed that we can nurture and grow, and may one day change the world.”
Hubbell is survived by his wife, Anne, children Drew, Torrey, Lauren and Brennan Hubbell, six grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.
His creativity will continue through the Ilan-Lael Foundation, which means “a tree that is a gift from God,” and through his son, Drew, partner in the Hubbell & Hubbell Architects firm.
An epilogue on the Ilan Lael website notes, ”He is fortunate to have had many friends around the world who today mourn his passing. And so we will join hands in memory and in sorrow, but in confidence that the work James started, we will carry forward, as he would have wanted.”
The family sugge
stions donations in his memory may be made to Parkinson’s Foundation or to the Ilan-Lael Foundation, P.O. Box 1221, Julian, California, 92036
On his foundation’s website, Hubbell reflected on the interconnection of life, and of continuity after death.
“To say that we are more alike than different is true, as human life was formed from stardust, the explosion of stars to form supernovas that create and cast all the elements of the planets and all life in the universe,” he wrote. “It gives me comfort to know that life has this continuity. We are born containing these starburst elements, and these particles and energy remain, even after death.“
He expressed his wishes for his ashes to be scattered from the hillside chapel (photo, right) on his property facing the San Dieguito River, and his fantasy that his ashes will be carried to the sea, then across the Pacific, where someday a pearl diver would make a remarkable discovery after prying open an oyster:.
“There is still life within the crusty exterior. Deep inside the oyster, her knife tip releases a luminous round pearl that, unknown to her, contains the elements of my ashes,” Hubbell reflected in writing his own epilogue. ”There, the circle of one life is complete.”
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