The Art of Cuba

Roberto Fabelo

Art on the Block

Come to the preview on Wednesday, Oct 24th 6-8 pm. It's in Chelsea.

Saatchi Gallery Showdown

For those of you who didn't receive my shameless e-mail bidding for your vote, please don't be disappointed:
I'll beg you right now.

Please vote for me here on the Saatchi Gallery Showdown (voting opens Oct 22-29th 2007),

and all of your wildest dreams will come true!

Sherlock Holmes and Serendipity Cake

Upon waking this morning, I randomly discovered that my friend Jacques de Beaufort had placed on his blog - Jung's chart - right below a random beer advertisement.
To this innocuous action Steven LaRose commented, "ah, to be Jung and full of beer"... at which point it struck me that Jacques and Steven were exchanging secretly encrypted communications. And so, I immediately set about to unearth their duplicitous scheme.

Realizing that no beer add is truly random, I unlocked the secret code through a complex system of laying one over the other. Don't try this at home. The next step was to discern what this incredible image was telling me. After hours of laborious contemplation, the sweat of my brow trickled down into my salted and bleary eyes, and I suddenly realized that I still had that decoder ring I found in a cracker jack box when I was six. How serendipitous!
Thus, I finally discovered the three truths that were so obviously intended for me to discern, which I will kindly share with you gentle reader as you do not have the unequivocal aid of my decoder ring.

My higher unconscious is embracing the universal higher spiritual being - who is both male and female (I had a sneaking suspicion!).

My collective unconscious is flirting with my lower inner being,

and my higher self seems to be some indiscernible kind of cake.

Pinochle and Parsimony

My wife and I just took our first vacation in almost three years. Our grandparents (my side) invited us to come stay with them in Houlton, Maine... about 2 miles from the Canadian border. To all appearances it seems that all my expectations were off base. I expected something out of Green Acres, and what I got was more Northern Exposure. There is a surprising thriving cultural community nested in those hills, with all the quirks of any eclectic arts group, and some ethically minded activists living completely off the grid. We were nearly there ourselves with no access to a computer, little TV (I didn't miss it) and no telephone, cellular or land-line. It was truly a poem in simplicity, which made each moment the more poignant.

Not only was the land absolutely breath-taking, but the time spent with my grandparents (love them though do) was surprisingly entertaining. My wife monopolized my grandmother's time and I did the same for my grandfather. Every day began with a trip through the countryside - perhaps to go pheasant hunting - a lesson in economics (the tariff lifted on importing Canadian potatoes had destroyed the local agrarian economy) and a journey into history (my grandfather grew up there). And every evening ended with Pinochle. I recall at the height of a game, when my grandfather won a bid, something more than cards passed between us. I believe a little bit of understanding was born.

Being the self centered youth that I am, I had not realized that this man I had known my whole life was actually a stranger to me. This was the first time I had spent more than two hours with him since I was 15, and at that time I was hardly interested. But it was as if I suddenly had connected with something rooted in my soul that I had never guessed existed.

All the stories, all the moments, all the visions of his life recounted
might have passed out of memory with him years from now, and I would never have known.
I mention this because of the inevitability, and the fact that my grandfather has bladder cancer. I do not know how much time he has left, something none of us really know. I hope that we have time to spend at least a few more summers together in Maine.
Regardless, I am thankful that I took the time to drive ten hours in an unknown territory
to make a journey into the past.

And forge a few moments for the future.