I jokingly mentioned his perfect hair a few times just to be friendly then later we ended up running into each other at the mall. So we've had a few good chats and he explained his situation in more detail. Then he told me he was an artist. OKAY, WHAAAAT? His hands are seriously deformed as you can see from the pics. So I seriously doubted his ability and almost took it as a joke till he told me to look up his work.
Holy crap! Amazing stuff and talented artist. I went for a visit as he said he wanted to make a video of his art and his story. I took my camera and snapped a few pics at the Claremont Train Depot. One of his favorite and my favorite sites. OK, my artistic ability allows me to take pics of the place but this dude can paint it ha ha! OK he wins, better artist! :-P
I recorded the video and ended up with over an hour of footage. Amazing story but I have to go back and reorganize to a different format rather than just a chat cause we chatted way too long ha ha! I need more organized footage to get the whole story in a certain amount of time.
But the dude has been a featured artist at local art galleries including Claremont art galleries. He has won awards at art shows including first place. He has a very attractive wife, always dresses nice, and perfect hair.
He faces more obstacles than most artists being handicapped. He only has a 5 inch range of motion with his arms so he paints section by section. He has to turn the paper at times having to paint or draw upside down. I watched him paint and I am impressed. His hands are deformed to the point where they almost look like bear paws. So he holds the art brush with his right hand and holds it from falling with his left taking both to support the brush. Amazing! I know people who if missing half a pinkie, they would find a reason no to drive ha ha! So this is amazing!
The other amazing thing is he put himself through college, Pomona Pitzer College, got his degree and became a teacher and private tutor.I'm impressed as I am still trying to learn how to spell "college" ha ha!
Anyway, I need to record the video a second time with a better plan to shorten it, make it short and sweet, maybe 10 minutes vs the 110 I have. Oh yeah, hard to edit footage as it's chatting and not actually answering questions about his story.
But here are a few pics I took. He was a good sport sitting on the tracks for a few pics. Good thing there weren't any trains coming. Plenty of people there that day taking pics. Not sure what was going on but plenty of photographers doing family pics.
One of the questions I asked was when did he realize he had artistic ability. He said as a child about 8, he could no longer go outside to play at recess. So he stayed in the classroom with the teacher. It was then he started doodling around drawing cartoon characters. He said he was surprised but he picked it up quickly and things were coming easy to him. After recess, everyday the kids returning from recess would gather around his desk to see what he had drawn that day! Became the talk of the town, pretty cool little story.
But a real cool guy and great artist! He gave us a couple of his prints that day and frames to put them in. Pretty cool stuff. One is an old Chevy bomb car in a snowstorm on Rt 66. Really cool detail and colors.
Here are the pics I shot of Ruben Caballero. One of my friends asked if I had photo shopped him onto the tracks. No, that is him posing on the tracks, he loves the tracks! ;-)
Painting, sketching, pens, you name it.
This is the print I chose, looks real nice as a final product in a white frame.
I put the letters on this one, security. :-)
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