Artist’s Statement:

We humans seem to be hardwired to learn from and be entertained by information presented in a linear series of interrelated events, i.e. stories. For many years my day-job was designing science stories for museum visitors, and while my current art making retains a narrative structure, unlike science education it doesn’t promote a specific point of view.

The content rudiments of my work are easily identified: juxtaposing a rational point of view (mine) with our species’ irrational thinking and behavior. Our politics, climate, religion, morality and anything sexual is fertile ground for social commentary, irony and humor. Humor? American’s nonsensical notion that extraterrestrials are more threatening than Covid is both frightening and helplessly humorous.

I compose by setting interpolated ideas, figures, characters and actions in a common environment, united within an overarching concept, a big idea, a plot, a story. To please my visual appetite, I squeeze this story through the constraints of an art school education, a high-jinx world view and a lifetime of judging and gleaning from other image makers.

Without exception, my process of visual fabrication influences the original concept. While I’m committing my scenario to paper, the relationship between rendered objects, as well as their positions in pictorial space, begin to suggest interesting deviations to the narrative. Maintaining the original story’s thread is essential, but some variations are irresistible, and I incorporate them whether they embellish the story, add tangential interest or are simply intriguing.

The major elements of my original story always seem to withstand the creative cavorting of my process. The story is modified, but in many ways the completed work has become a broader and a more nuanced portrayal of the original idea. Of course the narrative trail becomes more convoluted, but take heart, I never really intend the breadcrumbs I leave to guide you out of the woods.

– Don Hughes

Don Hughes was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the year Picasso assembled the head of a bull from a bicycle saddle and handlebars. However, Don was raised in southern California’s sunny optimism and B-picture cowboy ethics where, without uttering a discouraging word, villains in black hats were foiled by good guys in white hats, and liberty and justice for all seemed possible.

Don received a master’s degree in printmaking from the California College of Arts and Crafts, then spent several years teaching at Southwestern, a community college near the Mexican border, when our behavior at our borders was more civilized.

In the studio, Don’s work began to incorporate notions that our dystopian world was also helplessly ironic and humorous. These content traits were beginning to manifest themselves in work some art critics of the time referred to as the “West Coast approach,” story telling without the pretensions of abstract expressionism.

On a parallel “economic needs” track, Don began a career commitment to informal education in public science venues, first developing and designing exhibitions as the Director of Exhibitions at the San Diego Natural History Museum, then as the VP of Exhibitions at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where his design fitness expanded to involve curating the overall on-site visitor experience for the more than 60 million who visited during his tenure.

Don describes his day-jobs as “gifts” because they utilized his creative skills, but they also occupied his time. Yet, he continued to create in two and three dimensions as well as in film and video. He occasionally shared examples from each these disciplines in solo or group exhibits in galleries and museums, before deciding art books would be his primary focus.

Don has again begun to show art in a variety of formats, but he has not abandoned his practice of printing and mailing to a circle of admirers and private collectors, who appreciate his social commentary, symbolism, and irony. Don reports, “An unannounced mailing is the perfect art form. If they open their mail, you have a captive audience, and if you don’t open your mail, you have no critics.”