For the past 20 years, the Solomons have owned the historic home, located on the Moses Hughes Ranch a few miles west of Lampasas.
During that time they used it predominantly as a bed and breakfast. But since about 2004 the couple has used the house as their private residence and Pablo’s art studio.
Pablo, who is known for his drawings and sculptures of dancers, has seen recent success as an artist. Just a year ago his works were on exhibit at the Wortham Center in Houston as a one-artist show. But the successes have not been without early struggles similar to others in his profession.
Having an artistic bent most of his life, growing up in rough sections of Houston helped toughen Solomon for his struggles to become an artist.
“When I was a kid I was skinny and I was interested in art, so I got beat up a lot,” he said. “About the only place you could hide out that was air-conditioned was either the library or the art museum.”
Pablo said, he spent a lot of time at the art museum and the library.
“Of course, eventually I got tough enough to take care of myself also,” he said. “You have to in that environment.”
He worked a wide variety of jobs, including some that influenced his artwork, such as teaching dance.
He taught at Houston Contemporary Dance Theater, which at the time, he said, was the premier modern dance theater in the city of Houston.
“I’ve had a relationship with dance from the time I was a teenager,” he said, referring to aspects of martial arts that were weighted toward performance.
“I’ve been around dancers and drawn and sculpted dancers and that’s what I’ve built my career on,” he said.
Pablo said the setting of the historic Moses Hughes Ranch and house have served to foster his creative energy.
With the house populated heavily with his paintings and smaller, sculpted works, and the ranch yard peppered with larger, stone sculptures, the influence of the ranch’s location can be seen in the placement of the works, particularly in the outdoors.
“As an artist, what more could you ask for?” he says.
“Every once in a while you just feel the whole atmosphere here is very artistic and it’s very conducive to art and it tends to stimulate your creativity,” he says.
He adds that often he sees things in nature, such as the graceful shape of tree branches in winter, which he has incorporated into some of his drawings.
“A couple of years ago I did a whole series of dancers with birds,” he said. “Nature has its own rhythm, its own natural dance.”
He gathers some of the stone for his sculpted works from the ranch.
Beverly, who serves as creative director and muse for her husband, is a former model who also worked in sales and marketing for Diane von Furstenberg, Revlon and Ralph Lauren.
She used her marketing skills to help advance his work. She said they were able to close the doors on the bed and breakfast in 2004 after his career began to take off.
Sitting in the home’s kitchen at an 1820s table once owned by the Hughes family, Pablo said the Moses Hughes family arrived in the Georgetown area from North Carolina in the 1830s. Moses Hughes later married the daughter of Georgetown’s founder.
“Moses Hughes first built a mill on Sulfur Creek, where Lampasas is now, to grind corn, and the town of Lampasas built up around that mill,” he said.
He added that Hughes built the house several miles out in the country to a location near a spring flowing with fresh water along what is now FM 580.
Hughes originally moved to what would become Lampasas for the health of his ailing wife.
“In 1853 he brought his wife up here and she drank the water and bathed in the springs and eventually became so much better that she ended up having 10 more children,” Pablo said. “The fame of the springs spread and eventually Lampasas became a very big resort town in the 1880s and ’90s.”
Early on, he said, the family had to defend themselves against a number of minor Indian attacks.
Beverly says that living in a house built in the 1850s has a number of benefits.
“This house was laid out perfectly with the seasons, and because they had no electric heat or air conditioning, the doors and windows are lined up so you can always get a cross breeze,” she said.
The 18-inch thick walls hold in the cool morning air and the Solomons generally do not need to use their air conditioner until August.
Today, the house is the Solomon’s private residence and not open to the general public, although visitors wishing to view the art may contact them to arrange a visit and tour of the studio and ranch yard.
