Faith Hubley (1924 - 2001) was born in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan. She left home to go to Hollywood to pursue a career in filmmaking. She began as a messenger at Columbia Studios, but eventually worked as a sound-effects and music editor. During her time in California, she met her husband, Director, John Hubley. They married in 1955 and moved to New York, where they established their independent animation company, The Hubley Studio, Inc. The Hubleys' work employed a free-form visual style. Their unique sound tracks featured improvised dialogue by their children, and jazz scores by Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie and Quincy Jones. Their twenty-one films received scores of prizes, including three Academy Awards from a total of seven nominations.

After John died in 1977, Faith continued to complete one independent film each year. Her solo work was inspired by world mythology and the art of indigenous peoples. A selection of these films screened at the Schoolhouse Gallery in connection with her June exhibit: "Africa" (1998), a visual praise poem dedicated to the place of our emergence, "My Universe Inside Out" (1996), Faith's animated reflections on her own life and "Northern Ice Golden Sun (2001), Faith's last film which explores the Inuit's deep attachment to the natural world.

Faith Hubley's work has been honored in the Cannes, Venice and London film festivals. She received fourteen CINE Golden Eagle awards and the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award presented by the San Francisco International Film Festival (2000). Her paintings have been exhibited in galleries from Annecy, France to Los Angeles, California. In 1995, she was honored with a retrospective program at Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery. She received honorary doctorates from Columbia College, Chicago, Hofstra University in New York and the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. At the time of her death in 2001, Faith Hubley had completed 25 solo films and was a senior critic in the Department of Art at Yale University where she taught a class about developing one's own visual language.

Faith Hubley died of cancer in December of 2001, at the age of 77, just a few months after she was a guest of honor at the Provincetown International Film Festival, attending a retrospective of her work. The following year, PIFF instituted the Faith Hubley Memorial Award, and bestowed the inaugural award to director Mira Nair.

While drawing much of her inspiration from ancient cultures and primitive art, Faith Hubley nurtured her own personal artistic style and vision by drawing and painting daily.