Exhibit of a lifetime
“I really find understanding the depths that are possible, even with one pencil, is interesting to me, along with what you can do with many colors. That’s a real joy.” Chicago Heights gallery features artist who has been creating for 90 years
When Maureen Hubbard Cribbs was in high school, she would regularly draw pictures of mermaids for the boys in her freshman class.
If any of her classmates happen to wander into the Union Street Gallery in Chicago Heights these days and want one of her mermaids currently on display, it will cost them between $150 and $200 for a print.
“Guys, you’re going to have to pay now,” Cribbs said with a laugh. “They used to be free.”
Call it art appreciation. Cribbs, 96, of Park Forest, has been creating for roughly 90 years. And her latest exhibition, Artistic Explorations, opened May 25 at Union Street, 1527 Otto Blvd. It features a curated selection of her paintings and woodcut prints, including a 6-foot-by-6-foot canvas.
“The hardest part of doing this show is reducing the number of pieces to something that would fit in here,” said Mary Ann Trzyna, a studio artist who helped curate the show.
The gallery is featuring a few of Cribbs’ large canvases, some reminiscent of underwater views from a week she spent collecting specimens with the Shedd Aquarium, while other works nod to her time growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The show also highlights the artist’s printmaking abilities and penchant for creating variable editions. Cribbs uses different paper, colors and techniques to create unique images from the same block — and sometimes adds some paint for good measure. Instead of being numbered, some of the prints include notes on the back about how they were created.
“I’m fascinated by her process because she is very experimental,” Trzyna said. “It’s just a very interesting, explorative process. It’s sort of the same imagery, but it’s not. There’s been something else added, subtracted, played with, recolored, and it makes a whole other image.”
Cribbs added, “It’s interesting then. It’d otherwise be like a factory, and I’m not.”
In fact, Cribbs was initially