Artist, writer, and sustainability pioneer Harlan Hubbard (1900-1988) lived an unassuming life, only to find himself embedded in the historical memory of Kentucky. While some may know of Hubbard’s shantyboat sojourn on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers with his wife, Anna, or of the Hubbards’ shared quest for the simple life at their hand-built home of Payne Hollow, few will know the full, fitful, fascinating story.
After four long decades of transformation, Hubbard emerged into middle age as the rightful heir to the Transcendentalist ethos, ready to, like his revered predecessor Henry David Thoreau, envision a unique American life of simplicity, sustainability, and wild beauty.
In this comprehensive biography, Jessica K. Whitehead reveals why Hubbard, beloved by his fellow Kentuckians, can serve as inspiration for all readers interested in the history of American landscape painting, literature, adventure, and environmentalism. Driftwood delves into Hubbard’s family history and relationships, his education and creative development, his friends and supporters, and his theories on art, writing, music, and philosophy.
Using published and unpublished journal, letters, manuscripts, and artwork, Whitehead pieces together the distinct phases of Hubbard’s life, offering new insights into his character and legacy. By examining Hubbard’s perspectives on literature, art, and responsible living, Whitehead helps connect the early Hubbard, grappling with his identity on the banks of the Ohio, with the better-known, confident, and intentional Hubbard of later life.
Going beyond Wendell Berry’s nearly thirty-year-old biography, Whitehead offers a complex portrait of a life that deserves inclusion in the nation’s broad cultural history and to be studied alongside those of other iconic American thinkers and artists. Presented is a vivid and legible portrait of Hubbard and the traces he left behind–books, journals, paintings, sketches, handcrafted and unique structures, and a template for a sustainable life in our modern ecological landscape.
Praise for Driftwood: The Life of Harlan Hubbard:
Jessica K. Whitehead has done more than brick-and-mortar work to reconstruct the forces and personalities that shaped the life of a unique Kentuckian. She has done much more, tracing the quest of Kentucky’s Thoreau for a life lived close to the bone in the natural world, a life that combines simple living with genuine creativity. The book becomes a reflection on the restlessness of the American spirit and asks what it means to pursue individual happiness free of the mania of owning things and the amassing of wealth that too single-mindedly has answered for the American dream. In a feat of research and revelation that avoids hagiography, Whitehead has made this icon fully human, examining the mythos of a legendary Kentuckian to reveal the essential Hubbard, a man we would have to invent if he had not existed.
~Richard Taylor, former Kentucky Poet Laureate and author of Elkhorn: Evolution of a Kentucky Landscape
Place Harlan Hubbard in the line of American rebel mystics—from Everett Ruess to Scott and Helen Nearing to Daniel Suelo—who marched away from the casino economy toward a life woven with nature’s risks and ecstasies. Driftwood gives him the rich and wise consideration he has long deserved.
~Mark Sundeen, author of Delusions and Grandeur and The Unsettlers
Jessica Whitehead’s Driftwood: The Life of Harlan Hubbard is one of the most brilliantly written books that I have ever had the good fortune to read. Her ability to weave history into a riveting and timeless story of a Northern Kentucky artist will render this book the definitive biography of Harlan Hubbard. She paints a vivid picture of Harlan and Anna, resurrecting memories of this talented and countercultural couple whom I and so many others were honored to know.
~Paul A. Tenkotte, Ph.D., co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky and contributor to A Brief History of Northern Kentucky
Driftwood is a wonder, much like the Hubbard‘s themselves! Jessica K. Whitehead brings Anna and Harlan Hubbard to life with insight, creativity and skill. For those who are already admirers of the Hubbards this book will be a treasure. For those just becoming aware of them, Driftwood will be a wonder-filled vehicle to travel through the lives of two remarkable human beings. What will readers find on board Driftwood? A love story…an adventure story…the passions and frustrations of the artist…and perhaps a guide to living fuller, richer lives.”
~Morgan C. Atkinson, producer and director of the documentary Wonder: The Lives of Anna and Harlan Hubbard
Whitehead’s Driftwood is a vantage point from which we may survey not only the life of Hubbard, its component circumstance, coincidence, and experience, but also the topography of symbol and meaning that Hubbard explored. The hills, hollers, creeks, and rivers of our Bluegrass are revived and sustained by Hubbard’s work and Whitehead’s telling of it. Hubbard is hierophant of the wild and growing world, exemplifying quiet stewardship, gentle cooperation, and an ability to express the movement of the animate wilderness while communicating our place within it. Whitehead has traced the long shadow cast by Hubbard so that we may walk in the shade with understanding, surefooted and clear-eyed in the edenic garden that is our state.
~Zack Poehlein, co-author of Kentucky Deceased and the zine Derby City Midnight
Jessica K. Whitehead is the Nancy B. Rash Curator of Arts & Cultural Partnerships at the Filson Historical Society, where she deepens the Filson’s engagement with community stakeholders, expands the community’s knowledge of and for Louisville and the Ohio River Valley, and strengthens the Filson’s identity as a trusted public history resource and service-oriented institution that prioritizes projects of community revitalization.
She is the author of the recent biography of the artist, writer, and sustainability pioneer Harlan Hubbard, titled DRIFTWOOD: THE LIFE OF HARLAN HUBBARD (University Press of Kentucky 2025), as well as the HISTORY OF THE KENTUCKY DERBY IN 75 OBJECTS (UPK 2024), penned for the Kentucky Derby Museum in her previous position as their senior curator of collections. She is a contributor to the publications THE WATERCOLORS OF HARLAN HUBBARD: FROM THE COLLECTION OF BILL AND FLO CADDELL (UPK 2021) and the open access volume INNOVATION NATION: THE OHIO RIVER GATEWAY REGION AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA (NKU/ORVILLE 2025). Her next book, JOCK(ETTE): PREJUDICE, POP CULTURE, AND THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN FEMALE JOCKEY is under contract.
Jessica served as a founding board member of the non-profit organization Payne Hollow on the Ohio, where she still serves as an historical consultant and manages its collection of artifacts. She is currently the vice president for the Kentucky Museum & Heritage Alliance, and she is actively involved in numerous collaborative curatorial projects across the Commonwealth.
In her spare time, Jessica enjoys making art, gardening with her partner, Phil, and reading books with her very large cat, Bean. She lives in New Albany, Indiana.
If you also are interested in the success of the ongoing Driftwood initiatives, please consider donating, too. Your funds will go to support:
- Continuing research
- Driftwood-related exhibit proposals and programming into 2025 and beyond
- Website hosting and virtual exhibit design initiatives
- Community engagement fund for travel and speaking engagements
Any amount helps, and no donation is too small to make a difference. But, as a special offer, donors of $150 or more will receive a personalized, signed copy of Driftwood when it is released—along with the satisfaction of supporting the legacy of Harlan Hubbard.
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