On display in the Museum are the exhibitions: Students of the Unusual: Brevard County Comic Books, Superheroes: Photographs by Dulce Pinzón, the Batpod motorcycle from Parker Brothers Choppers, the Dark Knight Batman Costume, vintage comics including Spiderman #1, original art by famous comic book artists Graham Nolan and Allen Bellman, artist for Golden Age “Captain America” comic books, and the Twenty-first Annual Brevard County Student Art Exhibition.

What do Superheroes and comics have to do with art? Comics emphasize an interdependence of image and text. Defined by some scholars as “sequential art” there is no dispute that images in comics are essential to narrating a story or dramatizing an idea. Graphic artists use the crafts of draftsmanship and scripting, to complete the whole picture; this is accomplished through pacing, drama, humor, suspense, composition, thematic development, and irony. Sequential art is an important tool for conveying the power of ideas and its ability to convey messages effectively is dependent on the skill of the artist.

The Students of the Unusual comic book project developed from a friendship of four like-minded individuals, Terry Cronin, Jeff Hall, Bob Lizek, and Pat Martin, who decided to make films. “The Students of the Unusual comic book project developed from our experiences in independent film and started as storyboards for some of our wilder ideals,” says Cronin, “but it has always been grounded in our love and respect of the comic art form.” Writers Cronin and Martin enlisted the aid of many talented graphic design artists including Jorge Calamato, Sergio Carriello, Luis Diaz, Dove McHargue, and others to craft visual stories, many of which are set in and around Melbourne.

A fascination with superheroes inspired local chopper artists the Parker Brothers to re-create Batman’s Batpod motorcycle. Fueled by a desire to showcase their artistic and engineering capabilities, the Parker Brothers reveled in the challenge of recreating the Batpod from “The Dark Knight” movie. Designed as a “full scale 1:1 working replica,” the steel and fiberglass machine is powered by nitrous-injected, 650cc engine and wears 508mm tires, grappling hooks, and all manner of faux weaponry including grenade launchers and .50 caliber machine guns. The Parker Brothers Batpod, a unity of inspiration and engineering, exemplifies the Museum’s ideology: “where art and science intersect, where culture and technology thrive.”

Superheroes of another kind are the muse of Mexican photographer and former New York resident Dulce Pinzón. She photographs documented Mexican migrant workers of New York City at their jobs while wearing superhero costumes. Each portrait’s caption includes the worker’s real life name, hometown in Mexico and the amount of money they send to Mexico each week. Her meditations on the concept of heroes led her to shine a spotlight on those who labor quietly but make daily sacrifices to help others.

Also on display will be original drawings by well-known comic book artist Graham Nolan. Nolan is co-creator of the villain Bane who will be featured in the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises Batman movie.

Visual storytelling is a technique employed by many artists. The Museum is devoted, through its various exhibitions and programs, to making audiences aware of other forms of art in Brevard County.

Jumping Catfish Batman! Don’t forget the Eau Gallie Arts Districts Founders Day Fish Fry from 12 to 6 p.m.

About the Brevard Art Museum

The Brevard Art Museum is a non-profit organization supported in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs; the Florida Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts; Brevard County through the Brevard Cultural Alliance; the Brevard County Tourist Development Council; and by members of the Brevard Art Museum.

Visitor Information

Location: 1463 Highland Avenue in the Eau Gallie District of Melbourne.

(321) 242-0737

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m., and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m..

Admission: Adults $5; seniors $3; children and students with I.D. $2. Free for Museum members. Special rates and tours are available for groups of 8 or more, and can be scheduled by calling Tina at 242-0737 at least two weeks in advance.

Still, work will begin on the paving of the other southbound lanes, which should make some of those congestion headaches reappear, just in a different direction. Paving reduces lanes to one, which obviously makes things harder to navigate and slower.

Most drivers’ escape from the mess, Old Dixie Highway, has also been roped off due to work on the old, degraded bridge over the South Relief Canal. This should take three months to complete.

Overall, problems such as colder weather, wrong sod mixtures and beach erosion emergencies using up available dump trucks have caused the painstaking delays in work on the southbound lanes. Work is scheduled to end by the finish of this week.

For more on this mess, visit tcpalm.com.

“The Highwaymen” is a name I’ve given to a group of black artists working on the East coast of Florida from approximately 1955 to the present. So called because their marketing and sales strategy consisted of traveling the highways and byways of central Florida peddling their paintings out of the back of their cars.

Although I’ve identified nearly twenty of these artists still living, they are, for the most part, unknown and have not received credit for their contribution to Florida’s art tradition. In fact, it was these artists who were the bare bones beginning for Florida’s resident/regional art tradition. Further, their paintings met a growing demand for regional Florida art and served to encourage what has become the Indian River school of painting, perhaps the only school or movement within the state that is recognizable as such.

The story of the Highwaymen begins with one man, now deceased, who has come to be known as the dean of Florida landscape painters, A. E. “Bean” Backus of Fort Pierce. I use the admittedly arbitrary date of 1950 as a point of beginning because that was the year Bean married Patsy Hutchinson and his career began to blossom. Unfortunately, Patsy died of complications following heart surgery in 1955. Bean’s love from then on was painting. He devoted himself to his art, the daily consumption of a quantity of rum, good conversation, and good friends.

Although Bean was a white Southerner during a time when racial equality was not yet taken seriously, he was a friend to all. This characteristic, coupled with a natural Bohemian bent, made him the perfect mentor to a group of young black men who had noted the apparent ease with which he made a living. Painting, for them, was perceived as being a way out of the fields and groves.

Most of these young men were content to learn by osmosis, by observation. Bean’s studio became a place to congregate. One seemed more eager to learn than the others. His name was Alfred Hair. To my knowledge, Alfred was the only one of this group of black men to take formal lessons from Bean and even accompanied him to the Bahamas on occasion.

Apparently Alfred had an entrepreneurial spirit because he later organized some of the others who had hung around Bean’s studio and began to “mass produce” Florida landscape paintings. They were usually done on Upsom board with whatever materials were at hand, including house paint.

It seems that Alfred employed specialists. Some were tree painters, some painted only skies, others did water. Who signed the paintings was of little concern to anyone.

Unfortunately, Alfred Hair was killed in a barroom brawl. Lacking his organizational skills, most of the others went their own ways and began to paint and sell for themselves. Not all of these artists were content to paint by formula. Some went on to develop their talents and skills and have gained respectable reputations. Some retained the highway sales technique.

A few of the more capable artists in this group are Harold Newton, now incapacitated by a stroke, George Buckner, still painting and selling near the thousand dollar range (George and his brother Ellis, now deceased, once operated a gallery in Coral Gables) and Al Black, who in my opinion most typifies the Highwaymen.

Somewhere I’ve heard it said that one sure road to success is to “find a need and fill it”. These black artists did just that. Whether we are willing to accept their work as “art” or not is an argument I won’t make. I do know that by painting for the marketplace they inadvertently created an awareness of and appreciation for Florida regional art. They deserve recognition for that contribution.

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For More information: judy@thesop.org

Source: The Student Operated Press

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com