Fara Isabel: She's Unstoppable Drawing

This mixed-media portrait – in color pencil, crayon, and acrylic washes – depicts a most impressive Cuban woman I met while attending the Havana Bienal, in 2015. Fara Isabel runs a community arts center in Old Havana, providing instruction in dance, music, theater, and visual art to everyone from preschoolers to seniors, as well as those with disabilities; and she has done so for well over fifteen years. Her center is located in an historic building – a nineteenth century mansion built for the first Black congressman in Cuban history – but an historic building that is condemned! Indeed, when I visited, yellow “Do Not Enter” tape blocked access to the grand stairs leading to the second story, and there was no ceiling or roof above the dining room. Still, serious and studious youngsters passed us on their way to and from classes, their instruments in hand. It seems the way of Cubanos – of women throughout the Third World, for that matter – to make a way out of no way,. And Fara Isabel possesses this quality in great measure, which is why I honor her with this portrait. The final day of my visit, I chanced upon the square where book dealers offer their wares. It was here that I came across a worn and torn copy of the “Atlas Nacional de Cuba,” an oversized book jointly published, in 1970, by the Cuban and Soviet governments on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. By carefully arranging twenty of its (19”h x 15”w) pages, I was able to suggest Fara’s form, as well as to create a frame around her, comprised of maps of Cuba. With archival acid-free tape I joined the pages together; then painted over the maps with layers of acrylic washes, and then drew over the result with color pencil and crayon. I wanted the resulting assemblage to have some of the cobbled-together quality that typifies Cubanos’ daily struggles for survival and creative joy. The one page in the composition that is not a map of Cuba is the blank page for Fara Isabel’s face; in its lower right, you might be able to make out the date and location of its printing ("Editora No. 2, URSS, septiembre 1970") – a nice historical touch