Watercolor painter, model shipbuilder create treasures at Tampa's Manhattan Place

He was still a baby when his grandfather, a shipbuilder, took him in, so Blas Hernandez can't remember a time before boats.

Growing up in the coastal Cuban city of Caibarién, they were everywhere; everyone built them, said Hernandez, now 77. In time, he became a shipbuilder, too.

"It's the only thing I know how to do," he said in Spanish through a translator.

The ships he builds now are wooden replicas — some as long as 6 feet.

He crafted a model of the British ship HMS Sussex in two years. The legendary warship sank in a storm off Gibraltar in 1694 en route to war against France. And while he doesn't know the exact design of the ship, Hernandez knows what it takes to make a ship work.

He enhances his knowledge with sketches and reports from Odyssey Marine Exploration, a company that claims to have located the ship's remains. It also claims to have found the SS Republic, which sank in 1865, about 100 miles off the Georgia coast. Hernandez made a replica of this paddle wheel steamship. It took him 1,613 hours, he said, and the paddle wheel really works.

He has more in his apartment, including Christopher Columbus' fleet, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, standing with dark sails at full mast.

He never wanted to sell them. But for air fare to see his five children and grandchildren back in Cuba, he would part with one.

He has lived alone at Manhattan Place for eight years. He divorced about 10 years ago. He has arthritis, he explains, as he pulls himself from a wheelchair, grabbing onto crutches at the door of his fourth-floor apartment.

At a table in front of his bay window are tools and his current project, a race boat that he plans to take out in the water at Picnic Island when finished.

"It's his devotion, his passion, his obsession," Sinclair said. "I've known him to tear boats apart, start over because he thought the proportions were incorrect."

Hernandez came to Florida 30 years ago in a 26-foot boat, part of the Mariel boat lift, which brought about 125,000 immigrants to Florida from the Port of Mariel in Cuba.

He said he built a 62-foot ship back in Cuba that hauled honey to Fidel Castro and later brought 32 people to Key West. He was paid nearly $1,000 for it.

Hernandez dreams of passing on his skill to children, or "the babies," as he calls them. He wants to fill a class with 10-year-olds and teach them, just like his grandfather taught him.

Five years ago Gary Maxwell was recuperating from major spinal surgery.

The pain was intense, said the 68-year-old. "But while I was painting, I never felt it."

Maxwell has painted in earnest since.

He had always loved art. Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, Maxwell was one of five children. He remembers getting a set of crayons when he was 9. But back then, there was no money for paints.

Later, working as a medical sales representative in New York City and raising his own children, there was no time.

Now, he paints landscapes fervidly in his Manhattan Place apartment where he has lived for the past four years. He doesn't feel as strong as he did before his surgery, yet he's not in pain either. He also reads often and listens to music.

"I treasure my own company," he said.

When his three children, who live in Miami and Nevada, and six grandchildren visit, they ask to see his latest. He has been divorced for some time, he said. Maxwell taught himself lighting, and how to add movement to his paintings. Many involve water, which he loves.

"Water has moods," he said. He points to a painting of a lighthouse surrounded by turbulent waves on jagged rocks. "I knew the sky had to be equally angry," he said.

In other paintings, water burbles or sleeps.

"When you paint, you get a greater appreciation for beauty," Maxwell said.

Maxwell left Jamaica 40 years ago. To this day, friends know him for repeating his father's sage quips.

"As my father used to say …," he regularly starts sentences.

On a recent weekday he followed it with: "Never scorn an opportunity to acquire knowledge."

His father dropped out of high school to help his family, but he gained life's wisdom — the kind Maxwell follows today.

"Do whatever it is you think you're gifted with," his father told him. "We're all transmitters of beauty."

Elisabeth Parker can be reached at (813) 226-3431 or eparker@sptimes.com.



For more

Contact Blas Hernandez by mail at 4033 S Manhattan Ave. Apt. 416, Tampa, FL 33611, or call (813) 839-1704.

For more

To see and buy Gary Maxwell's works, visit missmangos.com and click on the link to eShirleys eStudio.