Lillian Grooms Huebner (1892-1976) was a Santa Cruz artist who was also very active in the Santa Cruz community and the Santa Cruz art scene. According to the Archives of AskART, an online registry of artists, Lillian Huebner was born Lillian Mae Grooms in 1892 in the town of Ottumwa, Iowa. Lillian studied art at the Cummings Art School in Des Moines, the Lockwood Art School in Kalamazoo, Mich. and later with Claude Buck after moving to Santa Cruz in the year 1929 (Info. From askart.com and Edan Hughes Artists in California 1786-1940, Hughes Publishing Co, 1989 and S.C. Sentinel 3/14/1976). A member of the Santa Cruz Art League since 1930, she and her husband, artist Walter Huebner, helped facilitate the exhibit of the Last Supper at the Santa Cruz Art League Gallery, a wax-figure version Of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting (S.C. Sentinel 8/1/1974). Lillian G. Huebner also was program chair for the Santa Cruz Art League and President in 1950-51 (S.C. Sentinel 8/2/1943 and 3/14/1976). Lillian was President of the TTT state chapter in 1956-7 and state president of the Federation Art Club in 1958 (S.C. Sentinel 3/14/1976). She also was chairman of the Santa Cruz Beautification Commission and fine arts chairman of the Santa Cruz Women’s Club, and was a matron of the Order of the Eastern Star, and a high priestess of the White Shrine of Jerusalem (S.C. Sentinel 3/14/1976). In 1974, Lillian G. Huebner wrote Ours the Rose, a privately printed book about her childhood growing up on a farm in Albia, Iowa. The book was sold at the Santa Cruz Art League Gallery and included such childhood memories as visiting her grandparent’s “pioneer log house”, making the trip by sleigh, and having her home burn down sixty years before she published the book. Lillian G. Huebner is listed in The World Who’s Who of Women; Who’s Who in California and in the International Who’s Who in Art and Antiques (S.C. Sentinel 8/1/1974). Also according to AskART she is listed in Edan Milton Hughes’s Artists in California 1786-1940 (published by Hughes Publishing Co, 1989 (2nd Edition) and Crocker Art Museum in 2002 (3rd Ed. Harcover) which are available on Amazon.com. Lillian’s worked in several different mediums and her paintings were shown in exhibits at the DeYoung Museum of San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara Museum of Fine Arts, the Oakland Art Museum and the Iowa State Fair (S.C. Sentinel 3/13/1976). Two of Lillian Grooms Huebner’s works are included in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History’s MAH Historical Paintings Collection. Lillian passed away on March 14, 1976 (S.C. Sentinel 3/14/1976).
