As the wife of a private chef and cooking teacher, a role I frequently play is that of hostess.

There are three questions Francisco’s clients never fail to ask me after he’s presented a plate and headed back to the kitchen:

1) Can I have another mojito (or fresh watermelon martini, or whatever the drink of the day is)?

2) Can I take him home with me?

3) Can I get the recipe?

The answers, in order, are “Definitely”; “No, but you can come back anytime”; and “Um… there is no recipe.”

True, we own a relatively impressive collection of cookbooks–D’Artagnan’s Glorious Game Cookbook, The Culinary Institute of America’s The Professional Chef, and any number of volumes dedicated to explicating the virtues of a specific ingredient– an entire cookbook on prawns and two dictionary sized tomes about desserts. There are cookbooks I’ve made by hand, cutting out recipes I’ve wanted to make for years–chocolate profiteroles, anyone?–but have somehow never gotten around to. There’s a year old collection of Saveur magazines. There are other food-focused books, too: M.F.K Fisher’s The Art of Eating, of course, and Toussant-Samant’s History of Food. There are even novels and memoirs in which food plays a role so vital it could rightly be considered a character: Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (in English and Spanish), Isabel Allende’s Aphrodite, and, more recently, two books I’m reviewing, Kim Sunee’s Trail of Crumbs and Sarah Roahen’s Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table.

But the cookbooks are among the most pristine, unused books in our personal library. Francisco cooks mostly from feeling, whether it’s for family or for clients. Guided, first, by what’s fresh, and second, by what he wakes up and feels is the right meal for the day and for the people for whom he’ll be cooking, it’s about as close as we get in our household to a sublime spiritual experience in which some higher power seems to communicate its will and channel that through him. Sometimes, a day’s dinner will start the night before. Sitting at the computer, writing, I’ll hear the familiar sound of dry beans being poured into the clay pot, a sound not unlike light coins–dimes, maybe–accumulating in the slot machine tray when you hit pay dirt. The beans will soak in water overnight, accompanied by a bay leaf or two, and will bubble on low the next day until the steam blisters their skins, revealing their meaty richness. Sometimes, an idea for a dinner will come in a dream. Sometimes, with cooking class clients, the ideas develop as Francisco walks through a market with the guests, learning their likes and their dislikes, sensing how adventurous they are, how far their palate can be pushed.  

His measurements are exact, but not in the way of measuring cups and spoons. His techniques, some of them, are invented as he goes along and can’t be replicated at home, if for no other reason than they don’t require fancy tools.  Just intuition and imagination, and while you have both, just as we all do, yours is yours and his is his. Neither can be written down on an index card and kept in a recipe box. Even his inspiration today isn’t the same as his inspiration tomorrow. I’ve been trying to get him to craft the perfect hamburger again–which he made for us two years ago and which we ate on an exquisite summer evening on the balcony of our apartment in Puerto Rico–but it’s never the same.  

Which is fine. Perfect, really. In cooking class, he doesn’t teach people what to cook, or even how. He teaches them about themselves. He teaches them to be present to the way an unfamiliar spice meets the tongue for the first time. He teaches them how not to be afraid of the kitchen, how not to view cooking as a chore. How not to get wrapped up and paralyzed by what goes with what, but to focus instead on what goes with you. How food reaches deep into us and evokes memories and desires so primitive that we can’t help–as one man did at our table–to lick our knives as if no one was watching or, as another woman did, to run our fingers around the edge of the bowl when the last spoon of black beans is gone.

Published in Traverse, September, 2007

I am hurtling down Avenida Reforma, one of Mexico City’s main arteries, in one of the ubiquitous green and white Volkswagen taxis that everyone—tourists and locals alike—waits for, favoring nostalgia and its slight discomforts over the newer red and white Nissan Sentra taxis, which have no personality as far as we’re concerned. Nearly every block features an impressive monument rising up from the center of the avenue, each of which eventually becomes just another detail in the backdrop of life’s daily shuffle here in the capital city.

Mexico City, “D.F.” to locals, is a fascinating place where the old and new, the urban and the rural don’t so much collide as co-exist. Step into the heart of the city and you’ll find business people in suits, as likely to make important transactions over a lunch of sushi as over a one-peso huarache, or an ear of roasted corn bought at the corner food stand. Alongside the business people you’ll also
find men and women in indigenous clothing sitting on blankets on the sidewalk where they sell handcrafts, gum, and phone cards. Many people who come from the pueblos to make temporary homes in the city have no plans to stay. They come to make money and go home. But they
also come for a reason that is equally as urgent to them, and that is to bring their political and social concerns from the country here to the capital city, where they hope to attract attention for various causes: the alleged abuse of elderly people, illegitimate politicians who were not elected, land seizures, and the like. These campesinos, who form part of a movement known as 400 Pueblos, build tent cities on the side of Mexico City’s busiest thoroughfares, where they cook and live and protest, using the visibility of their location to bring abuses that are invisible to city-dwellers to the attention of the government, Mexico’s urban citizens, and to tourists alike.

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From the taxi I notice the nude and semi-nude men, who have grouped more than 100 strong, around one of the city’s most important statues, one that is strategically positioned in the middle of a round-about where the city’s principal avenues converge. I ask the driver to stop
and let me out, and I watch the men, entranced. They march, single-file, around the statue, not shouting, not waving banners, not doing any of the things one typically expects of a protester. Some of the men are completely nude, their penises hidden only by a photo of a politician,
which is secured to their hips with string. Most of the men, though, are in their underwear, with little else other than shoes—tough, worn-in work boots or sandals—or hats to shield them from the alternating chill and heat of a typical day in Mexico City. They range in age from young boys to elderly men, some handsome, some not, some thin, others obese. Some are wearing briefs, others boxers. Some underwear looks newer, but most is threadbare. The men do not appear to be having fun—it is obvious that this is not gratuitous exhibitionism—nor do they appear humiliated. They simply look determined, as if they believe
completely that their presence in this place, on this day, matters. What strikes me, as I stand on the sidewalk, is how powerful a statement they are making, and I wonder how anyone could ignore them. 

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The protest goes on for weeks and stretches into months. The men are marching every day, all day. Their behavior provokes a range of reactions. Commuters complain that the men’s presence, coupled with other protesting groups at other key spots on Avenida Reforma, is adding to already significant traffic woes of the city. The novelty
of the men’s nudity having worn off, they have become a nuisance, an inconvenience, and newspaper editorials urge the 400 Pueblos members to pack up and go home. The police who are assigned to the nude protest beat have also tired of the march. “We are here to protect their right
to march,” one officer tells me, when I ask him about the 400 Pueblos protest and inquire about the fact that he’s not carrying a service gun. “We must permit them to feel safe. And to ensure that they have the right to freely express their concerns, we don’t carry guns. But
to tell you the truth, this is all becoming very tiresome.” Even some of the marchers, in their dogged determination, begin to wonder whether their unusual form of political activism will achieve its ultimate goal, which is the rectification and redress of wrongs committed in the pueblos. “We are humble men,” one marcher tells me, when I ask about the protest and its effectiveness. “We have nothing but our bodies and so we are here. The government does not listen to us, so we must present
our concerns in another way. We don’t know if it will work, but we must continue to try.”

At the end of August, when the men and the women and children who accompanied them to the city decided to pack up and return home, it remained unclear whether the protest had achieved its desired goal. While the protest
brought attention to the concerns of the campesinos, it did not unseat Veracruz Senator Dante Delgado, who has been singled out as the figure who symbolized the worst of all the campesinos’ complaints. Nonetheless, the members of the 400 Pueblos movement, who plan to continue their
activism and who will likely return to the city, recognize that change—particularly when it involves bureaucracy—is slow. Although the nude march went on for months, and attracted international media attention, the men and women understand that their fight will continue, using the only means that are available to them.

Published in Traverse, February, 2008

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If you were to exit Interstate 85 in Spartanburg, South Carolina on your way to or from some point of greater interest, it’s not likely that much would capture your attention and draw you in. Big box stores and cookie-cutter franchise restaurants line the city’s main street running from east to west, flashing the same endless string of familiar names—Wal-Mart, Applebees, Home Depot—and offering up the same products available in any other town, off any other highway, in any other state.

But just a few miles from Main Street, there are plenty of places and people worthy of a visit. And that’s what writer John Lane is interested in and what he writes about in his newest book, Circling Home. Lane, who spent most of his adult life traveling away from his hometown, finds himself setting some deep roots in that very place in the second half of his life. He married another Spartanburg native and together they have built the county’s first LEED certified home, which is located alongside a creek bed. The premise of Lane’s book is simple: he put a saucer over the place where his home appeared on a topographical map, drew a circle around it, and committed himself to learning as much as possible about life within that circle—the history of the place, the people who have inhabited it, and how the relationships between people and place are forged. What resulted was far more profound than the exercise itself. A meditation about his hometown, Circling Home is also a book about the very idea of place and our relationship with it.

In addition to his writing, Lane is actively involved in a number of community building projects, including Hub-Bub, an artist’s residency community; the Hub City Writer’s Project, a press that is focused on publishing works about place; and, most recently, the conversion of an old textile mill to an environmental studies center for the college where Lane teaches.  

In this interview with writer, professor, community builder, kayaker, and self-professed “post-hippie Deep South anarchist,” John Lane shows Matador writer Julie Schwietert around the textile mill being converted into an environmental studies center, and talks about the relationships between people and place, between traveling and settling, and how to form community. Click on the audio links to hear clips from their walk along Lawson’s Fork Creek, and read on for a conversation about Lane’s book and writing about place.

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Julie:

When I was in sixth grade, my teacher gave us a science homework assignment: Go home, sit in your yard, and put a circle around yourself–imaginary or real–and just note what you see. The only real use my hula hoop ever saw was forming that circle, and like your experience examining the world within the circle drawn by a plate placed on your topo map, I was amazed by all that I witnessed in that small space. What is so powerful about drawing in our focus so tightly?   

John:

The easy answer is that it puts limits on your vision, but that’s not entirely true since a focused vision isn’t necessarily a limited vision. I guess focusing so tightly makes you inventory. When I drew my circle for CIRCLING HOME I began to list the things I knew I had to “settle” within it. And I also knew there was all the random stuff I had no idea I was going to encounter. Of course I also knew from the beginning that I was dealing with a big area compared to your hula hoop.

 Julie:

How can we achieve that kind of close attention to our immediate surroundings as a habit? As you mentioned when we walked around the mill site, we’re often fishing into the past or casting into the future, which makes it difficult to see what’s right around us.          

 John:

Well, the past year or so every morning I’ve been walking the same route with Toby [one of Lane’s dogs]. It occurred to me one morning that I could probably write another book about this route down below our house and along the creek a few hundred yards and back up to the house. It seems like a great deal to cover, especially when you add in the repetition of walking daily. I see geese pass over every morning and an endless series of fresh tracks, and the seasons change right before my eyes. Now the question quickly becomes, “What’s interesting about that?” CIRLCING HOME works, I think, because there is more to it than the attention to immediate surroundings. I also added the dimension of time in there. The book is so much about time, my time and the place’s time.

 Julie:

Are there any risks to drawing a circle so tight? Whether to our immediate community or the larger world?

 John:

There are two primary risks that come to mind: leaving out some vital context, and risking that the immediate community does not “get it.” Writing about such a focused local place, you risk writing a book that is only interesting to your immediate neighbors, or to people who have some connection back to the east side of Spartanburg. You risk not really creating something that can be universal. That’s not a bad book to write. Hub City’s [a press Lane started with two Spartanburg writers] made its living publishing such books for 12 years, but it’s not usually the kind of book “writers” want to write. I’m still uncertain whether the larger world will read CIRCLING HOME. So far it’s had fewer reviews early on than WAIST DEEP IN BLACK WATER or CHATTOOGA. Of course, every week that passes without reviews I wonder if I’ve just written this book for Spartanburg! But if that turns out to be true the only real risk to it is to my ego as a writer! I think the indications so far are that the immediate community does get it. The book’s moving well among my neighbors, though I still fear that someone will call or write and say, “You got it all wrong. It didn’t happen that way.”

  Julie:

One of the themes of Circling Home is the relationship between the self and the notion of settlement versus the notion of freedom. You mention that both settlement and freedom have their own comforts. What are some of those comforts, and do you think it’s possible to be both settled and free?

 John:

That’s a difficult question. Listing the comforts of settlement is easy. I love the security that comes from repetition. It allows for so much work to get done. I get up every morning in a warm house and I sit here facing this screen writing, or sit in a familiar chair and read. I know the place where I live. I go out into every day with some assurance that I belong here. But what sort of freedom has been compromised by my settlement? I haven’t longed much for the days when everything I owned would fit in the back of my pickup truck, but someday I might. I always think about a friend of mine who kept tortoises in his back yard. He had a big back yard. The animals were well-feed and cared for, but they walked all day around the perimeter of the yard. They walked that trail so much they wore a path. They didn’t care how big the yard was. They wanted out. I wonder sometimes if the act of writing (creative writing) isn’t walking that fence. And so what happens when you find an opening one day? But it’s also important to remember what you point out through the wording of your question: settlement and freedom, they’re both notions, and any reality will probably be a healthy mix of both.

 Julie:

Much of your attention and effort–in your writing, in your teaching, in your activism and community building projects– are place-based, deeply rooted in the clay of the Carolina Piedmont. Although you’re settled here, do you dream of travel? If so, where?

 John:

We went to Alaska last summer. That was a powerful trip. Betsy [Lane’s wife] called the trip “Into the Holiday Inns.” While there we visited with a piedmont expat, Venable Vermont, and it was interesting to talk with him. He’s lived up there for 25 years now. It’s changed him, but he comes back every year to visit family and turkey hunt. While there we traveled around and took in the sights. It had a profound impact on me. The human side of Alaska is so shabby and uninteresting—as V’s wife Kim likes to say, “Alaska is the only state without architecture.” But all that human shabbiness is surrounded by deep wildness. That’s exciting. Here you have to look so deep in things to see hints and glimpses of a remaining wildness. Other places? We want to go to New Zealand. We’re talking about spending Christmas next year somewhere in Mexico. I think as we age we’ll travel more and more. We love our place here, but both of us crave other places. And I need to point out that if you look back at WAIST DEEP you’ll see many essays about other places. It’s almost a travel book. And my next book I plan on putting a canoe on the creek behind the house and paddling by myself to the ocean.

    Julie:

In Circling Home, you ask yourself and your reader lots of questions: “How do we live with our neighbors? What level of commitment is acceptable? What lack of awareness is unacceptable?”  Do you think you’ve come closer to answers in the process of writing the book and receiving responses from readers in Spartanburg? If so, what are some of those answers?

 John:

One of my writer friends hates those rhetorical questions and they almost forced him to put the book down. I think they somehow diminished the book’s power for him.  But I think I had to ask them because I wanted the book to be the answer to them—“this is how.” I think he wanted me to work the answers out beforehand. One answer has been that I’ve remained in community and discovered that you can bring different perspectives to a community. So far no one who has read the book has told me that what I wrote is unacceptable.

 Julie:

You’ve learned to love Lawson’s Fork Creek even though you acknowledged it was an unlikely candidate for love. In the years when you put so many miles on your old truck, was there a place that kept drawing you back–physically or emotionally–either because of its obvious beauty or its harder, hidden beauty?

 John:

I went back to Wyoming many times in the years before I truly settled. I was comfortable there in a small town (Buffalo) where I had friends. I’d go there and stay a few weeks every summer and write and travel around Wyoming and Montana. The bottom dropped out of the housing market in those years (the 80s) and I nearly bought a small house there, a sort of vacation place in that small western town. What drew me there? It was a beautiful small town. In the 90s I stopped going and it was discovered by Californians and now the place is a destination. I’m glad I didn’t buy a place there. I have to admit that what drew me there were my friends, though. It wasn’t really the place. I got to know the place once I went there.

 Julie:

You’ve been–you are– a catalyst in several significant community building projects in Spartanburg… the Hub City Writers Project, Hub-Bub, the Writing in Place annual conference at Wofford College, and now, the environmental studies program out at the mill. Of these projects, is there one of which you are particularly proud? What kind of advice would you offer to people who are conscious of their desire to be catalysts of community building, but who aren’t sure how to go about the kind of tangible work that you have done and continue to do? 

     John:

I’m proud of all these “projects” but I also see how difficult they have been to establish. I know Hub City would have never happened had not the strange chemistry of Betsy Teter [former business editor of the local newspaper], Gary Henderson [reporter for the local newspaper], Mark Olencki [photographer], and myself come together 12 years ago. You can’t create such things. They have to rise of their own power. The timing was perfect for such an experiment in community. The same is true of the other projects—and now it’s happening again with the environmental studies center. As for advice, I don’t know what to say because I’m not sure HOW these things happened exactly except to say that they grew out of vision and attachment to this place. So my advice would be to attach to something, I guess.

John Lane’s Website: www.kudzutelegraph.com

The gleaming metal pasta machine sat in its box on top of the fridge for months, waiting for one of its carb-loving owners to remember to buy durum flour at Kalustyan’s, which we finally did last week.

Here are some photos from Francisco’s first homemade pasta experiment. The wooden clothes hanger doubles as a drying rack for the pasta before it is hand-cranked through the machine’s rollers, coming out as fettucine, linguine, or spaghetti on the other end. The sauce was homemade, with pancetta, baby tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, and fresh basil. The pasta was served with a side of vegetables that were grilled and sauteed–green beans, red onion, red pepper, mushrooms, garlic, and jalapeno–and paired with a Cabernet Franc.

Trust me, once you discover homemade pasta–how easy it really is and how amazingly different it is from boxed pasta–you’ll never go back. You’ll spend your weekends making and freezing batches of angel hair for a hurried weeknight dinner.

Published in Matador’s Traverse Magazine, September, 2006

Havana’s annual film festival always attracts cinephiles from around the world, but 1999 was a particularly crowd-drawing year. With the premiere of Julia Mirabal’s documentary “Los Picassos Negros” (“The Black Picassos”), film lovers were in for a treat: the first visual evidence corroborating that there is a Cuban branch of the same Picasso family that produced the masterful Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Although the film was short, running 19 minutes total, the news that Pablo Picasso’s maternal grandfather had left his family in Spain and had a love affair with a Cuban woman that produced four children, sent historians, art lovers, and journalists alike scrambling for a scoop.

There were plenty to be had.

First, Francisco Picasso Guardeño, the maternal grandfather of Pablo Picasso, had not fallen in love with just any woman. He had fallen in love with a Black Cuban woman, Cristina Serra. Second, Serra was a free woman, not a slave, and while interracial relationships between white Spaniards and African-descended Cubans were not unheard of, it was still uncommon at that time for such couples to marry or live together. Third, the descendants of their four children were soon documented to include at least 40 living Cubans as of 2005. Fourth, one of those “Black Picassos” seemed to be following in the footsteps of his famous relative, establishing his own foothold in the world of art, and struggling with the blessing and burden of the famous name and justly renowned reputation of Pablo Picasso.

There’s no reason, of course, to think that Juan Antonio and Pablo would have anything in common other than their surname, but the attempts to draw comparisons are frequent, says Juan Antonio. While Pablo Picasso was considered to be a bohemian who enjoyed the company of others, especially female companions, and was quite the public man-about-town when we wasn’t busy painting prolifically, Juan Antonio is a quiet, reserved, unattached, man-about-home, who spends most of his time painting. In May of this year I visited him at his home in Havana and learned that the similarities between the two artists ends where their shared name begins.

I first learned about Juan Antonio Picasso from my husband, Francisco, who represents Cuban artists and photographers living on the island and who is Cuban himself. He, in turn, first learned about Juan Antonio while reading Cuba’s state newspaper, Granma, in August of 2005. The article in the “Culture” section of Granma introduced the thirty year old Juan Antonio to the Cuban public for the first time, celebrating the opening of his first solo exhibition, “Ecos Pueriles” (“Childish Echoes”) at the Yoruba Cultural Center Gallery, located just on the edge of Habana Vieja. My mission was to track down Juan Antonio Picasso during my upcoming visit and learn a little bit more about him. What did his work look like in person? Would he be interested in representation outside of Cuba? Francisco’s interest in Picasso was not so much in his name, although to say that one is not at all interested in a name like Picasso would be untruthful, but rather in Picasso’s self-declared identity as an Afro-Cuban artist and his commitment to representing distinctly Afro-Cuban themes in his work.

That October, during my trip to Havana, I began looking for Juan Antonio Picasso in the way that anyone looks for anything they need in Latin America and the Caribbean: word of mouth. Cubans are famous for their ability to “conseguir,” or to come up with what one needs; the trick is, the person doing the asking must be willing to wait. I took what I believed to be a logical approach, starting at the Yoruba Cultural Center Gallery. I stepped up to the reception desk and asked the young woman posted there if she could introduce me to the director of the gallery. “Ella no se encuentra hoy,” the receptionist replied. “She’s tired, so she did not come to work today. You could try again tomorrow.” I returned the next day at a punctual 10:00 AM and asked the receptionist, a different woman this time, if I could meet the director of the gallery. No, the receptionist insisted gently, the director was still tired and no one else ran the gallery in her absence. This time, though, I was motivated to “conseguir.” I could not return the next day, as I would be flying home. This was my last chance to get in touch with Picasso.

“Mira,” I said to the receptionist, “Tomorrow I will be leaving the country. I have a rather urgent need to contact Juan Antonio Picasso. Would you happen to have any contact information for him?” In the States, walking into a gallery and asking for an artist’s personal telephone number, home address, or e-mail would be the equivalent of asking for the President’s direct line. It simply is not done; the gallery mediates all contact. I felt certain that my approach would not work, and so it was with absolute surprise and relief when the receptionist rifled through a drawer looking for a small address book and without explaining what she was doing, picked up the phone. On the other end was the resting gallery director; did she happen, the receptionist asked politely, to have Picasso’s phone number handy? She did not, and I was not to meet Picasso on that trip. I left with the receptionist’s assurance that she would “personally ensure” that my e-mail was delivered to Picasso, but I was not at all confident that I would be any closer to finding Picasso until my next trip, scheduled for May 2006.

It was with surprise, then, when two days after my return home that I opened our e-mail and found a message from an address we did not recognize, subject line: “De Picasso Cuba” (“From Cuba Picasso”). The receptionist had been able to “conseguir” the contact with Picasso! This first of e-mails, only one of many that have been exchanged since then, was characteristically short, humble, and yet assertive, clearly anticipating and warding off any potential comparisons or pressures by saying:

“…espero que se presente la oportunidad en que pueda conocerla y que podamos emprender nuevos proyectos siempre respetando mi estilo, tematica y soportes con los cuales mas me he identificado….-Picasso” “…I await the opportunity for you to know my work in person and to undertake new projects, always respecting my style, themes, and media with which I have identified….-Picasso”

That opportunity came in May 2006, when I traveled to Cuba for the third time. After months of friendly correspondence between Francisco and Picasso, the two had developed a mutual appreciation of one another’s work, values, and interests, and had agreed that my upcoming visit would be the opportunity to discuss details about a US exhibit and, if all went well, to prepare Picasso’s works for transport for his first show in the United States. We agreed upon a date. I would finally be meeting Cuba’s most publicized “Black Picasso.”

Getting to Juan Antonio Picasso’s home in the Boyeros section of Havana is no small task. First of all, to go to Boyeros is to realize just how large the city is. Second, if one wants to experience the Cuban way of getting there, you have a few options: “buscar un pon” (hitch a ride by standing on the side of the highway that runs from the interior of Havana towards the Jose Marti Airport); “montar un camello” (board a “camel” bus, packed to the brim and overflowing—literally—with Cubans, some of whom are on the outside of the bus and hanging on for dear life yet making that look so effortless, and others who are hanging on to the bus bumper with one hand and their bicycle handlebars with the other); or to take a Panataxi (state taxi) or one of Havana’s miracle cars, the 1940s and 1950s American models that are still running thanks to Cubans’ ingenuity and magic-making. Between my trip to Picasso’s and back, I did all three.

Detailed directions are priceless. There are no posted street names in Boyeros, just landmarks, the most important of which is “the big water tower,” which everyone uses as a reference point. The taxi driver simply decided he didn’t feel like driving around and looking for Picasso’s home anymore, and told me politely but firmly to get out of the car, leaving me without so much as a glance, on a corner beneath the water tower. I tried to follow Picasso’s not-so-detailed directions, but kept getting lost in the maze of streets; my feet were tired and dusty. I found a pay phone in the most unlikely of places and made a call to ask Picasso whether he could direct me from where I was, just north of the water tower. He offered a new set of directions, as cryptic and confusing as the previous one, and wished me luck. I ventured to ask if he could meet me at the water tower and we could walk to his home together, but he said he was sure I could figure it out on my own. Given that Cuba is not a country that is particularly taken with celebrities, and that no such thing as a Hollywood-type “star map” exists—at least to my knowledge—in Cuba, I couldn’t exactly knock on anyone’s door and query whether they could point me in the direction of Picasso’s home. Slightly annoyed, I plodded on, and finally, without ceremony, found myself in front of Picasso’s building. I must have stuck out because there he was on his balcony and called out “¡Oye!” After months, miles, and mazes, I had made it.

Juan Antonio Picasso lives in a neat-as-a-pin apartment. His art adorns the walls, but this is more of necessity than self-admiration. Like many artists, he produces more work than he can store, and despite the increasingly busy exhibition schedule that carries his work to various Cuban cities, as well as the increasing interest of the international press, Picasso is very careful about where his work goes. He is polite, offering rich black Cuban espresso to me while we look at and talk about his most recent works, but I sense a bit of weariness and wariness about him already, a bit early for a typical artist’s career trajectory. Quite simply, he wants to make art. As his name, his story, and his work become disseminated more widely, the demands on his time become more intense and the profit-seeking prospectors more numerous . CNN, Reuters, and other international media outlets have, quite literally, been knocking down his door. Articles have been published in the US, Mexico, and Germany, among other countries. Interviewers are interested in his name, of course, and are inquisitive about the fact that he is an artist who is mostly self-taught in a country where most professional artists have years of academic training that has refined their natural talents. His independent study has been supplemented, in the past three years, with formal apprenticeships and tutor relationships with contemporary Cuban master painters and sculptors. Early interviews with the press were more detailed and enthusiastic, but in more recent interviews Picasso’s answers about his work are sometimes abrupt and frustratingly vague. This is not his intention, he says, but simply due to the fact that he prefers painting more than public appearances. Also, he has quickly tired of the predictable questions about his lineage and the degree of influence his famous ancestor has exerted on his work. Like many artists, he admires Pablo’s work and feels inspired by it. But for Juan Antonio, it is his art, he says, that speaks for him.

What his art says is, like most art, clear to some viewers, and requires more context for others. Juan Antonio Picasso’s paintings are always infused with Afro-Cuban symbols and ideas. While some of those symbols may be common and somewhat transparent—the cowrie shell or a mask, for instance—others are more opaque and can open multiple layers of interpretation and meaning. Is the conch shell with a rudder silently signaling a return to Africa? Do ladders signify transcendence or the impossibility of climbing past a fixed point? Picasso will not decode the works for the viewer. He prefers this ambiguity, encouraging each to see his or her own experience and meaning in his work.

North American art aficionados will have the chance to do just that this fall, as four of Picasso’s works will be part of “Luz y Sombra: Contemporary Cuban Photography, Painting, and Drawing,” an exhibit opening at Casa Frela Gallery in New York City on August 5 and running through September 2. This exhibit will serve as a preview to Picasso’s first US solo exhibit, which will take place in 2007. Viewers will see for themselves Cuba’s “Black Picasso” and how his work carries forward the name of the great master, but is, true to Pablo Picasso’s own style, ever-evolving, both influencing and being influenced by, his own time, experiences, and culture.