Patrick Fagerberg
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Patrick Fagerberg (born October 20, 1969) is an artist, inventor and former lawyer, who is considered a rare case of acquired savant, a person who developed extraordinary abilities due to a brain injury. On the evening of March 19, 2011, while attending a concert at a music venue, a 400-pound camera boom collapsed and struck him on the head, causing a traumatic brain injury (TBI), resulting in memory loss and language processing problems. Following the accident, in an art therapy class, Fagerberg discovered a talent for painting. Three years after getting started, he opened his first exhibit in Houston, and has been represented by Gremillion & Co. Fine Art since then. Fagerberg is also the founder of RodaSurf, a new startup located in
Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
. The company's first invention "The RodaSurf", uses an atypical wheel placement on an
electric skateboard An electric skateboard is a personal transporter based on a skateboard. The speed is usually controlled by a wireless hand-held throttle remote or rider body weight-shifting between front of the board for forward motion and rear for braking. As fo ...
to mimic the feeling of surfing on land.


Early life

Born Richard Patrick Fagerberg on October 20, 1969, in
Cuernavaca, Mexico Cuernavaca (; nci-IPA, Cuauhnāhuac, kʷawˈnaːwak "near the woods", ) is the capital and largest city of the state of Morelos in Mexico. The city is located around a 90-minute drive south of Mexico City using the Federal Highway 95D. The na ...
, Fagerberg was raised homeless with eight brothers and sisters, roaming around the American southwest and Mexico. His father, Albert P Fagerberg, was an American independent film producer and writer who also goes by the pen name "Albert Pennell". In his autobiographical work, ''Where Do We Go From Here?'''','' published in 2005, Albert Pennell revealed he was the ghostwriter of Stand Up For America, the autobiography of the American politician
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist and ...
, published in 1976 by Doubleday & Company:
''When I had finished the ghostwriting of Governor George C. Wallace's, little publicized autobiography, Stand Up for America, I found myself broke and stranded in Montgomery Alabama, with my wife and our eight children. (Pennell, 2005)''
In 1994, Fagerberg's career as a professional soccer player in Hamburg, Germany was forced to stop due to a knee injury. This injury led Fagerberg to follow in his brothers’ footsteps and take up law school in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in Pe ...
, at Widener University Commonwealth Law School. In 1998 Fagerberg graduated from law school and moved to
Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
, to practice law.


2011 accident

On March 19, 2011, Fagerberg attended a show of the band
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) are an English electronic music, electronic band formed in Wirral Peninsula, Wirral, Merseyside, in 1978. The group consists of co-founders Andy McCluskey (vocals, bass guitar) and Paul Humphreys (keyboar ...
(OMD) at the music festival
South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...
(SXSW). A few seconds after the concert started, a 400-pound camera boom fell on the audience, injuring Fagerberg directly on the head, knocking him out for a few minutes. After being rushed to the hospital and running several tests and
CT scan A computed tomography scan (CT scan; formerly called computed axial tomography scan or CAT scan) is a medical imaging technique used to obtain detailed internal images of the body. The personnel that perform CT scans are called radiographers ...
s, Fagerberg was sent home that same night, as medics assured his neck was not broken and he had no obvious fractures on his skull. However, two days later, Fagerberg started having trouble with putting sentences together and reading. The following days, he began showing symptoms like "
raccoon eyes Raccoon eyes (also known in the United Kingdom and Ireland as panda eyes) or periorbital ecchymosis is a sign of basal skull fracture or subgaleal hematoma, a craniotomy that ruptured the meninges, or (rarely) certain cancers. Bilateral hemorrhage ...
" or periorbital ecchymosis, and bleeding from ears. This led to the discovery of a basilar skull fracture and he was soon diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Fagerberg spent the next year and a half attending
physical therapy Physical therapy (PT), also known as physiotherapy, is one of the allied health professions. It is provided by physical therapists who promote, maintain, or restore health through physical examination, diagnosis, management, prognosis, patient ...
,
cognitive therapy Cognitive therapy (CT) is a type of psychotherapy developed by American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck. CT is one therapeutic approach within the larger group of cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) and was first expounded by Beck in the 1960s. Cogn ...
, and
speech therapy Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...
. In 2011, Fagerberg sued Steve Madden, who had hired the videographer whose camera boom landed on Fagerberg's head. Fagerberg filed suit for
negligence Negligence (Lat. ''negligentia'') is a failure to exercise appropriate and/or ethical ruled care expected to be exercised amongst specified circumstances. The area of tort law known as ''negligence'' involves harm caused by failing to act as a ...
under the theories of respondent superior and ostensible authority,
negligent hiring Negligence in employment encompasses several causes of action in tort law that arise where an employer is held liable for the tortious acts of an employee because that employer was negligent in providing the employee with the ability to engage i ...
, and
negligent supervision Negligence in employment encompasses several causes of action in tort law that arise where an employer is held liable for the tortious acts of an employee because that employer was negligent in providing the employee with the ability to engage ...
. He also sued the festival
South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...
and the Stubb's BBQ music venue.


Savant syndrome and art career

During one of his
cognitive therapy Cognitive therapy (CT) is a type of psychotherapy developed by American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck. CT is one therapeutic approach within the larger group of cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) and was first expounded by Beck in the 1960s. Cogn ...
sessions, Fagerberg was suggested to do art therapy. While taking these classes, Fagerberg developed a sudden urge to paint, even though he had never painted before. In an interview for ''
People A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...
's'' magazine, Fagerberg described this experience to writer Alex Heigl as a "little trigger going off", as it led him to start compulsively painting 20 hours a day. Fagerberg took
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
's art and
Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( , ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His best known work, ''The Scream'' (1893), has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dr ...
's The Scream as main inspiration. He studied these artists' artworks hundreds of times before getting started with his own paintings. A year and a half into painting and with 300 artworks under his name, he was introduced to Ronald Gremillion, art critic and owner of the Gremillion & Co. Fine Art gallery in
Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
, Texas who decided to take Fagerberg on as an artist. Since the beginning of his art career, Fagerberg has been referred to as a rare case of Savant syndrome, in which people acquire savant-like skills in art, music and/or mathematics due to a brain injury. Fagerberg's savant case is featured in the book ''The Savant Syndrome. Intellectual Impairment, Astonishing Condition'' by Dr. Osvaldo Cairó Battistutti (), as one of the 60 known cases of this rare condition. Fagerberg's artwork has been described as in living the realm of the sublime. Although abstract, its been said that his paintings seem to represent large scale, cosmical events. Dr Tacey A. Rosolowski, a PhD in Comparative literature and art critic, has said about Fagerberg's art:
''like Expressionist predecessors such as Still and Mark Rothko, Fagerberg approaches abstraction as an act of representing fundamental natural processes and moments of becoming.''
Artist Jeannine Cook has also talked about the positive effect that art had in the recovery process of Fagerberg. She wrote an extensive blog post about it, where she says:
''I think that artists (and those who become artists as the result of some traumatic experience) are incredibly lucky that they have a way to face and deal with the twists and turns of life that can be so devastating.''


Inventor

Fagerberg holds a patent for the first electric vehicle to ever use an asymmetrical wheel placement. He decided to name his creation "The RodaSurf". RodaSurf's co-founder
Starr Long Starr McAuley Long (born March 12, 1970) is an American game developer, a long time collaborator with Richard Garriott at the companies Origin Systems (1992–2000), Destination Games (2000–2008), and Portalarium (2013–present). In 1997, Long ...
, world renowned game developer, called this invention the "electric surfboards for the land". By taking a one-wheel and creating a snap and lock system onto a surfboard, they created, in 2020, a surfboard that can be ridden on the streets. The RodaSurf board is an accessory to the Onewheel XR electric skateboard. Fagerberg's street-surfing has been the subject of several press articles in
Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
. He also appeared as a streetsurfer in the music video of the Austin-based hip-hop artist Reggie Lou, for his song Pinocchio.


Issues with the law

Struggling with his traumatic brain injury,  Fagerberg developed a severe cocaine addiction, which was fueled by the proceeds of his lawsuit settlement. His high levels of cocaine consumption would eventually lead him to be wrongly accused of being part of a distribution operation. Fagerberg was arrested in 2014. It was later proven he had no connection with the distribution of said substances. In 2018, Fagerberg was once again in the news, after getting into a dispute with a man who was speeding 90 miles an hour down his neighborhood's street and almost killed his child. Fagerberg admitted to chasing him through the neighborhood after the incident in his own vehicle, coming to his window, punching him in the face and damaging the driver's vehicle.


References


External links

*
Artist works at Gremillion & Co
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fagerberg, Patrick Acquired savants 1969 births Living people Artists from Texas Painters from Texas