Chasing Hubert-Finding Léon Salles

Life is like a river. Sometimes it flows gently, other times it flows swiftly and can take you completely off course. This week my Hubert search was thrown off course. The first time was at the local bookstore where I occasionally escape to work on chasing Hubert.  A creature of habit, I’ve grown accustomed to sitting in one of the only two overstuffed armchairs in the bookstore, superstitiously convinced that somehow these chairs are a good luck link to writing, researching, and finding Hubert.

Apparently it was an unlucky choice because once I logged on to the WiFi and checked my email I found a response from a print gallery I emailed in Paris. Only the print shop was not a print shop but a photography store, as in camera equipment. Somehow, I knew that finding long-established souvenir shops and print galleries in Paris was going to be a challenge. Just as I was about to go back to the drawing board and begin a new search the battery on the laptop gave out. Here I was, blown off course.

 I was also thrown for a loop this week was when someone posed the question “Why?” to me regarding my Hubert quest. So what’s in this Chasing Hubert for me? Certainly nothing of monetary value since my Huberts, although quite beautiful, don’t seem to fetch much in the art market. Certainly not fame since Hubert is virtually unknown to the world. Fame and fortune aside, it was my friendship with Tom, without whom this search would never have gotten off the ground, and his tragic death that was the driving force behind my Chasing Hubert. Tom was my inspiration and this search and subsequent blog is, in some small way, a tribute to him. That is why, in spite of drifting off-course this week, I’m hoping and counting on the tide to turn, adversity to ebb, and the river to course fluently…