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.”
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Cribbs added, “It’s interesting then. It’d otherwise be like a factory, and I’m not.”
In fact, Cribbs was initially resistant to a teacher’s suggestion to try printmaking. The typical process involves too much repetition for Cribbs’ tastes. But she came around to the printmaking process as a way to make a statement with inks and colors and neutrals. While she does not care for the chemical methods, she came to love cutting wood blocks and other techniques.
“Sometimes it’s just the process that’s really interesting,” Cribbs said. “I really love the roughness of working with a piece of wood and beautiful papers and nice colors.”
Cribbs said she is not a surrealist but often lets a block of wood tell her what design it wants to be — responding to the physical properties of her materials, as the exhibit description puts it. She similarly has created paintings she never dreamed about doing just by paying attention to them as they have evolved.
“I love when people come up with a dream in the morning and know what they’re going to do,” Cribbs said. “I’m envious of that. I don’t get that. I think it’s a little more pedantic on my part. … I just have fun with it.”
Cribbs still remembers her earliest artistic endeavors.
“I started by doing crayons on the wall,” Cribbs said. “Of course, I learned about washing the wall.”
Watercolors came next. Cribbs recalled her mother mixing them to paint. And her grandmother did a lot with fabrics, such as knitting and crocheting, offering an early understanding of designs. Cribbs used whatever was around to make things. For instance, she once chipped a bear out of a hunk of wood. Eventually, she got interested in oils and later acrylics.
“I taught, so I needed to know all the media,” said Cribbs, who was an educator for many years across a wide range of grade levels, including at Governors State University, where she earned a master’s degree in painting.
While she enjoys the work of certain artists, she refrained from calling anyone in particular an inspiration.
“I’m a seriously independent individual,” Cribbs said. “I’ve never had heroes. I’ve been stubborn enough to want to do what I want to do.”
Or needed to do. Cribbs said art is one of those things she has always done, no matter what. And her early interest in drawing never faded.
“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,” Cribbs said. “That’s a real joy.”
Trzyna said Cribbs has developed a distinct color palette across her work. She works both abstractly and realistically, eschewing the consistency some galleries seek from artists. But Union Street has proved to be a great fit, close to home.
“They’re real artists with courage,” Cribbs said.
And while the pieces hanging in Chicago Heights have prices next to them that her high school classmates may now have to pay, Cribbs’ interest in creating them is still more artistic than commercial.
“The idea isn’t to do it to sell it,” she said. “The idea is to do it because I want to — that my expression is there.”
Artistic Explorations is expected to remain until June 17, with a reception slated for 11 a.m.-4 p.m. June 3. Pianist Valerie Nicholson is to perform from 1-3 p.m.
More information about Union Street Gallery is at unionstreetgallery.org and more about Cribbs and her work is at maureencribbs.com.
Bill Jones is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.