Saying goodbye to two decades of art and love … HUGHES GALLERY PREPARES TO CLOSE AFTER 20 YEARS
Love is the language spoken here. If you know Boca Grande and its diehard art lovers, you know who uses those words on a daily basis. Barb Hughes not only has one of the kindest souls on the island, she also has one of the keenest eyes for art in all of its forms. That’s why it isn’t easy to deliver the next piece of news regarding Barb and her art gallery that has been in business for more than 20 years.
Hughes Art Gallery, located in the big wooden “Bike n Beach” building on Park Avenue will be closed this summer, as the owner of the building has another use for the space she is in. While Barb is holding out hope against hope she might find another location, the option doesn’t exist right now … at least not one that she’s aware of.
“By far, this is the best business we’d ever owned and it’s been my rock through the deaths of both of my parents, my husband, Jack, and my Dear brother, Ron,” Barb said. “Funny how things turned out.”
The gallery that has become so well-known for featuring exhibits of stunning quality and a wide variety of subjects has also been a launching point for some artists whose work was little known until Hughes Gallery featured them. It has been a gathering place for presidents, politicians, painters and poets for many years.
In the early 1990s Barb and her late husband Jack started selling their handmade jewelry at Stuart and Murph Hoeckel’s gallery, which used to be located next to The Temp. In 2000/2001 the couple got their own space in the Bike n Beach building that island resident Terry Seitz used to own, at first in the office space now utilized by The BRC Group. At that time an archway connected her current location with the BRC office space, and Jack and Barb imported British Colonial antiques from the 1700s to the 1900s. They also sold their paintings, fine crafts and the jewelry they created.
“The antiques became too difficult for Jack to move around in and to deliver, so when we gave up the BRC space in around 2004, Jack built a wall,” Barb said.
Her path to art was a winding one. She was a pre-law student with a double major in poli-sci and sociology, with a minor in international law. She was on her way to law school when, on a whim, she took an interview with McGraw Hill College Division. Out of more than 400 interviewees it was Barb who was offered the job … making her one of the first two women hired by that entity. They flew her to New York City two days later and a new phase of her life began.
While other students her age were spending more time at parties than in the classroom, Barb’s passion for learning led to experiences like asking her parents if she could add yet another major – physics – simply because Louis Pataki had just accepted one of his first teaching positions at her university (they said no, she had been at university for four years already), and being the only undergraduate Dr. Robert Mitchner personally invited to attend the Indiana University Writer’s Conference in 1970.
Barb’s love for the written word is apparent if you’ve ever read her blog. Since the quarantine she has been steadily adding entries about all sorts of life experiences and observations, in a way only she can phrase the words to make them her own (hughesgallery.net/barbarahelveyhughes/).
While in publishing with McGraw Hill Barb went to art school at The Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC and studied print making with the department chair (with an emphasis on serigraphy – silkscreen printing), but she had been interested in drawing and painting since she was five years old. She took her first oil lessons at 15 and painted all through high school and college. When Barb lost the vision in her right eye, she also lost depth perception.
“I had to adjust the way I interpreted things I was painting,” she explained. “That’s why I paint to ‘Matisse-like.’”
“I’d always been an avid reader and collected many art books, so I was deeply aware of the major, and sometimes minor, art movements,” she said. “I started, with three friends, the first all-women’s art group in Annapolis. MD and we exhibited our works in Washington DC. I took more art classes at Maryland Hall in Annapolis and was always involved with the American Craft movement. Jack and I were wood carvers, print makers, painters and, eventually, jewelers. Of course, I am more poet and writer than anything.”
While that may be true, Barb’s eye for the next amazing direction the art world will take is undeniable … and it will soon be lost to the annals of history unless she can find a new location to host her artists.
The Hughes Gallery has until June to find a new location, or close for good. If you have any thoughts on the matter, contact Barb at Hughes Gallery on Park Avenue, or at hughesgallery@earthlink.net.
