A multifarious local artist converted a Springfield commercial space into his art-filled residence | All photos by Cole LoCurto
Published on July 23, 2026 at 11:58 am
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If you want to get to know Marlon Hubbard, the walls of his Springfield home – a former commercial space turned six-bedroom, four-bathroom residence – are a good place to start. Not only does the collection on view provide insight into the Chicago native’s personal aesthetic, it traces, in memoristic detail, the multifarious artist’s many creative pursuits through a vast and vibrant collection of paintings, photographs, sculpture, folk art, multimedia works and more.
That’s not to say that Hubbard wasn’t vocally forthcoming with his biography when I visited his home earlier this summer. My request for an escalator pitch (like an elevator pitch, except, with a more predictable trajectory), was requited with something much less linear – a highly engaging narrative that bobbed and weaved, tracing Hubbard’s career arc across six different states and innumerable job titles, with a purview that included graphic design, photography, interior design and art direction work for multinational brands and household-name advertising agencies.
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According to my transcription, it was 45 minutes later – more than two decades into his career, and a half-dozen post-graduate degrees and professional certificates later – that a gig for the Jacksonville-founded supermarket chain Winn-Dixie lured Hubbard to Northeast Florida.
Since arriving in Jacksonville, he’s opened restaurants and now runs a food cart, Windy City Eats, which serves delicacies from his native city, including Chicago-style hot dogs. When I ask Hubbard, if, after an illustrious creative career spanning nearly four decades, running a food cart represents a kind of pivot to early retirement, he laughs, and offers that it’s continuation of an ethos he dubs “creative lifestyle alchemy,” in which art, education and entrepreneurship are ceaseless, interweaving pursuits.
Like its current owner, the building in which Hubbard has made his home had lived many lives – a grocery store, insurance offices, a nightclub – before he bought it in 2010. By the time he laid eyes on it, the space had been stripped to its bones, and only partially renovated.
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He was comfortable with commercial-to-residential restorations, having completed a similar project in Winston-Salem’s now-famed Piedmont Leaf Lofts, where he established a residence and gallery space years before the success of the North Carolina city’s urban-revitalization efforts were assured. In Springfield, he saw a similar opportunity. “This was where I felt most at home,” he says of his adoptive neighborhood. “It reminded me of Chicago or Winston, with the mix of industrial and residential, every socioeconomic strata.”
A tour of Hubbard’s home corroborates and – more specifically – adds color to his biography. As Hubbard’s creative gigs moved him around the country, he amassed works by friends and acquaintances, former colleagues and, later, pieces by some of the artists he showcased during a stint as a gallerist. “Art is the foundation of life,” Hubbard says of the collection he’s amassed. “It’s the heartbeat of everything. And my way of communicating.”
Exhibited among the antique furniture in the open-floor-plan kitchen/living room, there’s sculpture and folk art collected during trips to Africa and a colorful mix of paintings, including one by former LaFace Records Creative Director, the Atlanta artist DL Warfield. There are mixed-media works by Chief Zacheus Oowonubi Oloruntoba, the late Nigerian artist and healer, hung in the primary bedroom. Opposite striking light fixtures, pulp paintings by the colorist Preston Sampson are hung in the primary bath. Hubbard’s own black-and-white lifestyle photos hang in the home’s gameroom, near arcade and slot machines and his father’s record collection.
There’s art in the closets and framed and unframed works scattered about waiting for wall space. Art books, magazines, exhibition catalogs and Hubbard’s own portfolios are stacked on just about every available surface. “I’d describe my aesthetic as eclectic,” Hubbard says. “I like well-crafted things. But I’ve studied so much – from industrial design, furniture, graphic design. All of it just feels like a part of me.”
Been in a BOLD SPACE lately? We’d love to see it and share it with Jacksonville Today readers. Send me a note: mshaw@wjct.org
