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artist Paul Fryer — and, like everything else, this piece comes with
a good story. The sculpture Nox Intempesta anchors the living
room and consists of a WWII air-raid horn that plays a scratchy,
hauntingly beautiful recording of Fryer singing "Everyone's Gone
to the Moon." Stubbs discovered Fryer in 2005 on a rainy night
in east London. She was lost and trying to fi nd another artist's
studio. "He was wearing a white lab coat and looked like a mad
scientist," Stubbs remembers. Fryer then escorted her downstairs
into what felt like a time machine — a space fi lled with radios,
transformers, and electricity sparking everywhere. "Everyone's
Gone to the Moon" fl oated out of the air-raid siren, and bolts of
electricity crackled from a lightning machine he had built. "I
realized I had stumbled onto something no one had seen before,"
she says. "I bought his work on the spot." That night, when
Stubbs returned to her room at Claridge's, her body was so full
of electricity she blew the circuits the minute she touched the
bedside lamp. "They upgraded me to a suite," she says, laughing.
Ever the visionary, Stubbs has bequeathed Nox
Intempesta to the Nasher Sculpture Center in honor of
her late sister — a decision she made many years ago
after she'd hosted the museum's founder Ray Nasher
for dinner. "We were all heading into the dining room,
but Ray was just standing there, transfi xed, for about
15 minutes, listening to it," she remembers. "If I had
any doubts that it might be worthy of the Nasher, that
put it to rest."
