The creek of a backyard gate, the crunch of little feet on summer grass, a knock at the door. Brannon Belcastro, not 10 years old at the time, made the small pilgrimage most days. Once, the gate served as easy access to her neighboring babysitters, teenage sisters Jane and Erika Yeomans. When they went off to college, Brannon kept toddling over, always welcome at Mrs. Yeomans\u2019 little red art table.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was Mrs. Yeomans to me then, but she\u2019s Barbara now,\u201d she says. \u201cBarbara was messy, and as a kid, I was scared of messy.\u201d Brannon\u2019s mother was a quilter, a medium of precision\u2014even cuts and stitches, crisp patterns followed without aberration. Barbara\u2019s house was filled with bits of papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9, sewing machines, and hunks of clay made from flour and salt. \u201cShe always encouraged me to explore and be curious,\u201d Brannon says, remembering how Barbara would prompt her to craft without fear or expectation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That same instinct helped shape much of what Fort Myers\u2019 art scene has become: experimental, open, grassroots. A painter and printmaker, Barbara wasn\u2019t the city\u2019s most prominent artist, but she was among its most formative. Her practice was dynamic: blended mediums, inventive techniques and styles ranging from exuberant abstraction to restrained realism to botanical minimalism. Her work ebbed and flowed as she did. In one privately owned print, Barbara finished off the piece by scrawling a quote from jazz legend Wynton Marsalis across the bottom: \u201cSustained intensity = ecstasy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t fully claim the title of artist until later in life, but no one remembers a time when she wasn\u2019t creating. Barbara passed away in January, but what she built, with no blueprint, still resonates.<\/p>\n
Back in 1954, Barbara followed her college sweetheart, American airman Lawrence (Sherrill) Yeomans, from her home in England to Fort Myers, where his family had lived for generations. The River District was a cheeky Old Florida hamlet of marina slips, soda shops and marquee-lit restaurants. The main cultural draws were movie screenings at the Edison Theatre and shows at the Historic Arcade Theatre.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She fell in love with the wild, subtropical surroundings, later pulling natural influences into her artistic practice. Bark & Bits uses plant debris collected on the grounds of Edison and Ford Winter Estates near her home to create deep maroon imprints of seed pods and bark arranged against a wash of sunset yellow. Caught, on the other hand, shows her environmental consciousness. The multimedia assemblage depicts a fish\u2014made from circular bits of tin foil\u2014alongside a collection of crushed cans, old jewelry and bottle caps hung from string.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other materials were less obvious. \u201cShe always smiled when she talked about her work,\u201d Brannon said. \u201cI\u2019d ask what something was, and she\u2019d tell me to try to figure it out and get back to her. You could tell she was a little bit delighted when nobody could quite figure out what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barbara, who had studied fashion at Cheltenham School of Fine Art, started her life in Fort Myers as a seamstress, teaching lessons and opening a Downtown dress shop called Needle & Thread. \u201cShe made all kinds of things for us\u2014all of our outfits, all these crazy toys,\u201d Erika says. Barbara hosted fashion shows, went into the kids\u2019 school to teach them how to make paper flowers and welcomed neighborhood kids into whatever project was underway. Meanwhile, Sherill built up the family printing business, whose clients would include Edison Community College (later Florida SouthWestern State College), local magazines, and artists Robert Rauschenberg<\/a> and Ikki Matsumoto<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the mid-1970s, the Yeomanses were regulars at dinner parties with Fort Myers\u2019 \u201cFirst Lady of Theater\u201d Barbara B. Mann, local choral director Tom Walters and Edison Community College president David Robinson. \u201cThat was some of the original group that got together and said, \u2018This region needs some type of entity to promote the arts,\u2019 and out of those original conversations, sprang the Alliance in 1975,\u201d her son, Adam, recalls. \u00a0<\/p>\n Alliance for the Arts would become one of the region\u2019s central cultural institutions. But in the beginning, there wasn\u2019t even a building, just a plot of farmland donated by Fort Myers attorney Charles B. Edwards, architect William R. Frizzell and other local businessmen. Neighborhood kids like Erika put on plays on an outdoor stage in homemade costumes\u2014the beginnings of a student theater program. Co-founding artists put on shows and taught classes in whatever spaces were available.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sherrill died unexpectedly in 1985, shortly after the kids went to college. The couple had planned to retire and take up printmaking together. Rather than abandon the dream, Barbara enrolled at FSW to study the medium. The hands-on practice that could turn anything\u2014leaves, string, scraps of paper\u2014into a moment of impact, fit well with her crafty nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the years that followed, Barbara worked constantly and exhibited often. As the Alliance\u2019s founding generation aged out, she remained a constant, creating a bridge for a new wave of people eager to grow and participate in Fort Myers\u2019 artistic infrastructure. Among them were current Alliance board president Carolyn Gora and her husband, Bruce, the architect behind Alliance for the Arts\u2019 current-day building.\u00a0<\/p>\n