By Jonathan Wemette

	Nuri Bustillo and Olga Buffett, whose friendship built a gallery

The Buffett Gallery is a small establishment with one modest showroom and a cluttered back office. The friendship that built it, however, is nearly epic in scope.

Between 1960 and 1962, Operation Peter Pan brought more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to the United States. After the Communist takeover of Cuba in 1959, parents who opposed the new government and parents who feared their children would be shipped to Soviet work camps sent their children to Miami. Financed in part by the U.S. government, it became the largest exodus of unaccompanied children in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

	Limones, oil on canvas, 26x48, 2006, by Olga Buffett

In America, Buffett and Bustillo lived together in a foster home in Florida City and began to rely on each other for comfort. 

“We held hands because we were so scared without family,” Buffett recalls. “At night we used to pray and then everybody would fall apart crying.”

The girls were together for almost a year before Buffett left for a Catholic boarding school in Texas. By then, the two had grown as close as family.

“That’s why we always say we’re little sisters,” Buffett explains. “She always writes me, and she calls me ‘mi hermanita’ – ‘my little sister.’”

Happily, both girls were eventually reunited with their families in the United States. Bustillo moved to New York with her parents and her friendship with Buffett became dependent on letters and occasional visits.

“We all went to our own life,” Buffett says. “Nury moved to New York and I went to Puerto Rico to school, and then I got married and went to Vancouver. So we were apart, but we kept in touch. Every few years, we’d meet in New York but everybody had their own life and family to raise.” 

	Nuri Bustillo shows her jewelry with friend Olga Buffett

Then, in the early ‘90s, nearly 40 years after they first met, both women found themselves living in Miami again. Their busy lives kept them apart for a while, but a chance meeting brought them back together in 1992. “We ran into each other again in a store,” Buffett recalls, “and we’ve been together since then.” 

In their years apart, each woman had dabbled in the visual arts. “I did some painting when I was in the University of Puerto Rico,” Buffett says, “and Nury took some drawing courses in New York.” Together, though, the women’s creative temperaments took off, and they were soon traveling to Europe together to attend classes on painting technique.

“We would set up workshops in different cities and go for a month,” Buffett says. “In Europe, especially in Spain, they take forever to learn techniques, but we would go from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., take a break, go to eat, and then come back to the school. One year, we were going to school until 9 p.m. It was very exhausting, but we enjoyed it because that was our passion.”

	13 Good Luck Corals and a Jet, 2007, necklace and bracelet set, by Nuri Bustillo

A few years ago, Buffett and Bustillo decided to take that passion and channel it into a gallery that could showcase their creations alongside the work of their friends in the local artistic community. The women are members of a devoted group of artists called the Artists Group of South Florida.

The resulting Buffett Gallery is a testament to the ideals and values of two friends whose lives were shaped in part by the chaos of their childhood migration.

“[Operation Peter Pan] made us very strong and also made us realize how important love and peace are,” Buffett says, “because we missed them. In the most formative years of your life, we didn’t get any of that, so I think we crave for it, we try to bring it out in everything we do, in our family, the work we do, the community. I think that’s very important to us.”

	Olga Buffett with one of her paintings at the Buffett Gallery Photo: Jonathan Wemette

This is evident in each woman’s talent for tranquil still lifes and serene landscapes. Bustillo also creates original jewelry using colorful stones and intricate links. Buffett supplements her ordered sceneries with bolder, wilder abstracts, currently displayed only in the gallery’s office.

The other works displayed in the Buffett Gallery, which will be rotated to accommodate as many artists and styles as possible, further reflect the owners’ artistic sensibilities. The compositions are beautiful, and there is a strong emphasis on harmony over discord.

“We are very spiritual people, we like nature and peace,” Buffett says of their community of artists. “And I think that’s what keeps us close.”

If it keeps them as close as Buffett and Bustillo, the Buffett Gallery should have friends for years to come.