When She Comes

Chapter 1 - The Perpetual Burden Of An Artist

The perpetual burden of having a creative mind is a head full of ideas and a warehouse apartment scattered with papers detailing indecipherable hand scribblings, charcoal sketches, tattered spiral notebooks and visually creative photographs that reveal the fiery soul of the shutterbug who took them.

Anyone with a bird's eye view of Sabine DeVries' combined warehouse studio and living space might draw the conclusion she's sloven or a hoarder, but there was beauty in her chaos that only a true artist could understand.

Everything felt like art, from the mixed white washed that still peeked the strong red brick behind to the window panes and chunky wooden arched door with heavy iron hardware.

Her clutter was fertile ground for inspiration, stimulating the right side of her brain compelling her to make order out of what seemed to be sheer randomness to the outside world.

Tonight, Sabine wasn't trying to make progress on her current work, or conceptualize her next project. Instead, she was at her drafting table tinkering with a sketchpad and pencil detailing items from her last couple of nights strange dreams. These dreams contained two main ingredients, items that somehow felt intrinsically connected and a loving spirit or angel providing some sort of indirect message. Each night pieces of a puzzle were laid out beckoning her to determine how they fit together.

Born into a wealthy mining family in Colombia, her mother Portuguese and father Columbian, Sabine benefited from a very successful family tree of old money. Her mother's great grandfather, dubbed 'The King of Cork,' ventured into the cork bottle stopper industry that is now in its fourth generation. Additionally, the family diversified investing in banking, energy and fashion accumulating an obscene amount of wealth.

While she grew up with a want for nothing, it didn't mean she happily embraced it. The DeVries children were raised with a strong work ethic and Sabine personally shunned extravagance. That wasn't to say she didn't like nice things or lavish parties on occasion, but it was not part of her daily life.

Most often, you found Sabine in jeans and tight t-shirts, camera in tow along with her sketchpad, charcoal sticks and graphite pencils never far behind.

At the age of 34, her largest investment to date is her art studio warehouse apartment in her new hometown of Minneapolis. Obviously, her father invested in it too, he wanted to be sure that she was safe, comfortable and set up for success in her work; however, because of that she certainly wasn't a starving artist.

Sabine's new home of Minnesota was dubbed Minnesota Nice but she found it to be Minnesota Ice, not especially welcoming to outsiders. In contrast, the art community welcomed her with open arms and there she made friends easily. Taught well by her parents, she is a giver by nature, allowing struggling artist Clive Rasmussen, to use the studio portion of her apartment for free. He is a painter that loves to conceptualize and paint some of Sabine's most beautiful stories shared after late night dinners along with artful ideas of his own.

Moose and Sadie's Cafe was a place both of them frequented and where they first met one another on a late Saturday afternoon. Sabine went for a mid afternoon treat, taking the last chocolate chip cookie. Clive wanted it too, giving him an idea which began their loving friendship, "If I bought the cookie, would you be willing to share?" He asked.

He did, and they did just that.

If Clive was honest with himself, then he would tell you that he was more intrigued by her accent and beauty. Instead he would say he was happy to meet a fellow artist. Living in white bread Midwest, where you had to look hard to locate the melting pot, he loved meeting new people with a diverse history, style and a loveliness like Sabine. He was attracted to her from the moment their eyes roved up from the last chocolate chip cookie.