Quite A Career Change!
This blog details the stories, the inspirations, and the sculptures of my Venezuelan artist husband, Wilmer Roballo.
Background
A native of Venezuela, Wilmer spent four years in the military academy and 28 years in the Venezuelan Air Force as a helicopter pilot and officer, eventually retiring as a colonel in early 2018. I met Wilmer at a wedding in Saint Paul, Minnesota on August 31, 2018 and after a year together, we moved in 2019 to my beloved hometown of Duluth, Minnesota on the tip of Lake Superior.
A Pandemic Career Change
In the spring of 2020, having survived his first winter in Duluth, Wilmer said he missed the beaches in Venezuela. I said “we have a beach!” and brought him to walk on Minnesota Point (Park Point Beach). Lake Superior is so huge, it acts like an ocean. In fact, it is the largest freshwater lake in the world by area (the largest by volume is Lake Baikal in Russia) and its waves continuously wash driftwood up along its shores.
Well, during our walk, Wilmer noticed a single piece of driftwood lying in the sand that looked to him to be a woman’s upstretched arms. Intrigued by his find, he found her legs and finally her head. Back at our apartment, he used the serrated bread knife (argh!!) and some glue to create a sculpture of a woman. He said she represented the beauty and strength of Lake Superior and named her “The Lady of the Lake.” Everyone who saw her thought she was amazing. Encouraged, Roballo kept returning to the beach to see what else he could find and continued to create more unique sculptures.
The Wood Talks to Him
Inspired by the shape of the driftwood, Wilmer does very little carving, instead finding pieces that fit into each sculpture naturally. He says that he gets his ideas from the wood. Since the wood “tells him what it wants to be,” he thought he couldn’t take credit for his creative ideas. Also, he has never had any formal art training. It was hard to convince him that he truly was an artist!
Living in Sawdust
In the fall of 2020, I was getting tired of dealing with all the sawdust created by Wilmer sanding wood in our apartment bedroom. He tried to control it, holding a mini Shop-Vac in one hand and his Dremel in the other while he worked on a piece of wood held by a vise! (He got an “A” for effort, but it didn’t really work, in case you’re wondering.) We also adopted a little dog and were feeling the need to have some more space. So we bought a house with a little workshop, a garage, and a solarium. Encouraged by the space, Wilmer filled the house with sculptures, placing the biggest pieces in the garden, where they are enjoyed by those walking and driving by.
Duluth Driftwood Art Gallery
In 2022, we opened a gallery in our solarium so that we could share all of his pieces, big and small, with the public. The Duluth Driftwood Art Gallery is open by appointment by calling me at 651-983-9100.
That’s all for now
Our plan for this blog is that Wilmer and I will both write entries. We hope you enjoy it and we welcome your comments. Thanks for reading!
Sincerely, Susanna Ojakangas
