George Gabb's funeral will be held on Thursday at the Bliss Center. As far as we know, there's never been a funeral there before, but most agree it couldn't be a more fitting tribute for a man who's life was art. In public life, George Gabb was known primarily as a sculptor, but he was also a playwright, a poet, a painter, a carver, a chef, and a philosopher. But more than all that, for us at Channel 7, George Gabb was our go-to guy. In a personal remembrance, Jules Vasquez looks back at Gabb and his many moments on Channel 7.

Jules Vasquez Reporting,.
On the first broadcast of 7NEWS, February 14, 1994, our very first feature was on George Gabb. I did the camera and Audrey Matura did the report. Because it was our first, we figured we had to do something grand, something worthy of what we wanted to be, but certainly were not, so we chose the most oversized figure in all of art George Gabb.

He was larger than life, and we, were a mere blip on the media radar screen, but we strived for the kind of grandeur and overstatement George Gabb epitomized, kinda like big paws on a puppy. In 1994 we found him in his home studio wrestling with one of the larger pieces he ever attempted, the breathtaking dancing with sustenance - still in rough form. But George was in full finished form, spouting philosophy like a fountain of wisdom.

George Gabb, [1994]
"We can't solve anything it is already solved - the more you know, the more you'll find out you know nothing. You will always want to know more."

And when we wanted to know more over the years, we always went back to George Gabb, our archives say at least 7 times between 1994 and 2001 - he was in a sense Channel 7's favorite artist, loved as much for his masterpieces as for his musings - like this one he gave to Jackie Woods in 1994:

George Gabb, [1994]
"My philosophy now is I think it would be an injustice to think or look at art with the eyes of human made limits and exactness. Art is a spiritual incalculable beyond man's mathematical comprehension."

Beyond comprehension, and that's the space that Gabb prowled endlessly and, when health allowed, energetically, constantly looking for that creative spark, as he told me in 1996.

George Gabb, [1996]
"If there is such a thing as a God and he is the creator, whenever we create, he smiles because we are just touching a little bit of his likeness."

And in that same interview, he would tell me more about that pursuit of a glint of godliness as he shared one of his favorite mantras.

George Gabb, [1996]
"Hunt with hunger for that spot, that place where nothing is of value but everything is priceless."

And in Gabb's world, what wasn't priceless, was pricey. This sculpture, 'tiger thinking man,' fetched a price of over $20,000 in 1996. And while he had to sell pieces to live, Gabb deplored the prostitution of art as he told us in 1994.

George Gabb, [1994]
"My dream really is to see this breakthrough where there is more creativity. I am tired of art seeing a shark and a boy and a sail boat - I am tired of seeing art being exploited, prostituted, in one way. I mean sure it is good to live from it, we need to live from it, its sustenance but still we owe something to art itself to our development. And until we can make time to do that, we are not getting anywhere; We're stagnant."

But George Gabb was never stagnant, he was always restless, looking for a new way to express himself, to find that perfect expression - this again from 1994.

Jackie Woods, [1994]
"What motivates you to keep on moving?"

George Gabb, [1994]
"A longing I suppose, it's the longing inside me, that is the way I am. I am never satisfied, I want to go on and on and on. At the moment you arrive, that's the end."

And it's an end George Gabb fought to resist. He continued to work in wood even though it was bad for his health and was making him sick. In 1996 he told me as much.

George Gabb, [1996]
"I have to be continuously working, whatever comes. Even if I get sick, I have to work, I have to work. If I work too much with the dust I get sick and if I don't work at all I get sick. So might as well I get sick in working and produce something because I am can't just sit down and wait. I got to do something."

That constant need to work, to create was a tireless refrain that he turned to in repeated interviews, mostly out of frustration at poor health diminishing his creative powers.

George Gabb,
"I can't, I can't really fool with this wood work anymore. What will I do?"

And what he did was re-invent himself. In a courageous move, he turned to metal, mostly scrap. George Gabb started making sculptures to resemble characters of Creole and cultural folklore, as in this one of parks and his cart, and this beleaguered, battered boxer. And so ten years ago, Gabb took a break from wood, but was still confident of his universal powers.

George Gabb,
"It doesn't matter what it is, it could be paper, sand, wood, anything - the nucleus of it really or the object of it really is to excite, provoke. Art itself is not a beautiful painting, it's not a beautiful sculpture, and it's not something that the proportions are right, the colors are right. No, there is a magic that lives in a good piece of artwork. If you can infuse that magic in what you are doing, that's art. You are just scratching the surface, scratching the surface when you do that."

And to prove that he still had that magic, in 1999 he went back to wood and created "the unbreakable will to intelligence." It was masterful, depicting the an ennobled, educated African descendant.

George Gabb, [1999]
"I wanted to a do a person who came form the bottom out of the rough journey in life and the struggle to rise was able to get there and develop a polished brain."

It would be one of his most captivating and majestic pieces, but controversial as those who commissioned it later declined it - a private patron bought it. Slightly burned by that, and in failing health, Gabb still had the spirit to move on - and went for this, an autobiographical piece, called "Story Bird" in 1999. It would be the last major wooden piece that he would make and it found Gabb the old man seen here reminiscing about bygone days on the sea. Multi-themed and standing over 5 feet tall, it would be his last major work in wood, and as much as it killed him, he told Dawn Sampson that he had to do it.

George Gabb, [1999]
"I am like this, this is the way I am made, I have to work. I have to do something. If I sit down, I can't survive and I don't to survive physical in the sense of having food and comfort, I mean to actually survive in my mind, to be at peace with myself I have to work."

Later on, continually failing health would confine him to metal pieces - as he told Keith Swift in the year 2000 and Alfonso Noble in 2001.

Keith Swift, [2000]
"Can we expect you to continue sculpting?"

George Gabb, [2000]
"No, no, I can't. I wish I could but I can't work in wood no longer because it has affected my health seriously and I tried and tried and it keeps on affecting my health."

[2001 to Alfonso Noble] "So I had to run away from the dust a little and I have to do something else because you just can't sit and twiddle your thumbs."

And while he couldn't twiddle his thumbs, George Gabb's great worry about his Belizean contemporaries were that when he reached out to them with the hand of creation, they simply folded their hands - this from 1999.

George Gabb, [1999]
"I have taught this creative process in the United States and it was well received but for some reason they do not hear what I am saying in Belize. I don't know why."

And even as he was perplexed by that question, George Gabb never stopped believing in the evangelical power of art - as he told us in 1994.

George Gabb, [1994]
"Really what we lack in all the arts in Belize truly is the creativity and it is not that we don't have the urge to create it, it is born in every human being, but sometimes it is stifled by the pressures of a so called developed society and different things but it can be revitalized, it can be evoked, and that really is my purpose for continuing in art...I believe I have a duty towards art. I am not going be modest, I should say, about it. I believe I have a duty towards art in this country. Let's do more, let's not only do it to sell it, to make money."

And while George was a purist, an evangelist and a master sculptor, he was never truly embraced in a community of cash carvers and nonbelievers.

George Gabb,
"I respect everybody's concept. I don't believe in any one thing but I believe absolutely in everything."

And in 2004 - that belief was rewarded, when Gabb was honored by NICH as the G.O.A.T. - the greatest of all time. He was grateful - he had finally gone clear.

George Gabb,
"It seems like everybody is appreciating what I have done - and it's heart lifting. And to see the amount of people that came around and shake my hands, it's not that I want the praise, but its to know that they do care. I can see more sincerity now than I have seen in all my life."

And he told us in 1999, all his life had been a struggle, an attempt to achieve but it all started with a trade he stumbled into.

George Gabb, [1999]
"I started to carve at an early age, at the age of 15 years, not because I wanted to be a wood carver - but because instead of wanting to be a wood carver or wanting to be an artist, there was no mindfulness of virtue in my attempt to carve. I just carved because I had to carve to survive. I had to do something with my hands. In the old days I couldn't get a job, I couldn't get a job and so I took things and made things from them and that's how I started and it grew and grew until I am still doing it, still doing it."

That theme of always going back to the wood workshop would recur in interviews from as far back as 1994.

Jackie Woods, [1994]
"So after this where does George Gabb go?"

George Gabb,
"Well I guess in the workshop - right in the workshop searching for more truths, that's about it - just go in the workshop, work, work, work."

And the workshop was his church, George Gabb worshipped art and worshipped through art.

George Gabb,
"I am satisfied and I thank him who stays hidden and often times tell us what to say. I thank him for giving me a gift that I could express his existence through my work, this mystic force."

So when I think of George Gabb in somewhere beyond, some afterlife, I know that he was too big, too restless for the confines of any place - even if you want to call that place heaven. Instead I'd like to think his spirit has joined the ineffable spirit of creation and he's up there with Michelangelo and Bernini kicking ideas around in the forever university.

George Gabb,
"It's like entering a university from which you never graduate. Whatever I learned and whatever I stumbled upon or find on this road in art, is not the ultimate, it always continues. There's always a continuity that never stops. It just goes on and on and on to make itself it's self. It's limitless. We are all dancing with sustenance."

Gabb's works form part of Belize's national collection, and are known to populate the private collections of Dean and Denys Barrow and Hilly Martinez, his patrons of many years. Of course, Belize's identity is intertwined with Gabb's creations as "the sleeping giant" is a watermark on the Belize passport and paper currency.