Lydia Rubio is part of a fresh wave of visual artists taking inspiration from the Hudson River — and contending with threats to it, including pollution and climate change, in her work.
The Cuban-born Rubio moved to the small city of Hudson, N.Y., within the past three years — but she was drawing on the Hudson River School paintings as far back as 1999, even from an ocean away. Back then she focused a vision of the river as magical.
The “paintings were a reference [point for] mythical illuminated landscape oils I did on Viñales, a valley in Cuba,” Rubio says. When she found herself seeking fresh creative input, she thought again of those influences. “Hudson, where Cole and Church had worked, was recommended by friends,” she says. “The wide Hudson River was the presence of water I needed, as I have mostly lived in places surrounded by water.”
Rubio brought a notable artistic CV when she migrated north. The American and Latinx artist’s work has been exhibited in nearly 30 solo and 50 group shows across art venues like the Bronx Museum of Arts, the Museum of Latin American Art Long Beach and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Over her 35-year career, a constant in Rubio’s work has been nature, which features heavily in her sculpture, painting, travel journals and more.
Visually, she still expresses the Hudson as almost mystical — while conveying, in works with titles like “Impermanent” and “Irreplaceable,” that pollution like PCBs and microplastics have degraded its water quality.
Most recently, Rubio participated in the Hudson Art Fair with a collection called ‘Letters To Hudson: 7 Letters for 7 Birds.’ The mail art series feels somehow both vintage and modern, ephemeral and lasting. And amid the social distancing of a pandemic, it speaks to our return to an old-fashioned means of connection — postal mail — that many of us are now appreciating anew.
We spoke to Rubio about her decision to settle in the Hudson Valley, her perspective as a female and Latinx artist and the stories behind some of her favorite work.
Clockwise Migration. Natural Pigments and charcoal on canvas, 72 x 62 inches
This piece is part of the Constellations and Mappings series (2016-2019). When she began work on this series, Rubio said it was inspired by the night and the heavens.
IMPERMANENT. Acrylic and Chalk on wood, 70 x 60 x 2 inches. The lowlands and local endangered fauna.
Also part of the Tarnished Nature Erasable Art Series, this piece shows endangered species of birds and fish which are affected by microplastic and sewage pollution.
Warrior for Peace. Aluminum sculpture, 30 x 60 x 18 inches
Rubio’s sculptures can be seen at public spaces like the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, The Port of Miami, The Women’s Park and more. The Warrior of Peace is made of aluminum sheets and based on a system developed like origami. Locally, Rubio has three bird-related pieces on view at the Germantown Library, part of the exhibit Finding Creativity in Chaos, through December.
Letters to Hudson. Letter and envelopes.
In this 2020 series of commissioned letters, titled ‘Letters to Hudson, 7 Letters to Hudson, 7 Letters for 7 Birds,’ Rubio was granted a Hudson Arts emergency award to create original mail art (and she continues accepting personal commissions for it, with 25 percent of sales donated to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology).
The idea for Letters to Hudson came to Rubio when she was looking out her window one day, expecting to see birds that migrate to the region. Her neighbor told her that the birds were gone due to climate change.
Letters to Hudson. Letter # 2, Mixed media on handmade paper, 11 x 8.5 inches
Letters to Hudson was a collaboration between Rubio, poet Margorie Agosin and translator Suzanne Jill Levine, all Latinx artists. On the challenges of being a female artist of Latin American descent, Rubio states, “The numbers for Latinx women artists do not even appear in these (art) surveys, and hardly any are found in fellowships or gallery lists. We cannot assume progress is greater that what the numbers say…we are erased! That is why we must redraw ourselves as artists, with the support of institutions and galleries. Below the glass ceilings, there are many rooms with glass walls.”
IRREPLACEABLE. Acrylic and Chalk on wood, 48 inches round. View from Olana
This piece was part of the Tarnished Nature Erasable Art series (2015-2019). This was a large-scale interactive series focused on the effect of pollution and global warming on the Hudson River. Rubio says she was conscious that “PCV toxins — chemical substances discharged into the river as waste — were produced by General Electric to insulate capacitors. Dredging started in 2002, and contamination remains.”
Of working at Olana, Rubio says: “It felt like a baptism into the region — meant to be.”
