ART
CLUB PORTRAIT
34
Vero Beach art group still growing after
almost three-quarters of a century
BY WILLI MILLER
PHOTOS JBY ANNE MARLSBARY anette Beach didn’t wait for the Welcome Wagon ladies
to knock on the door of her new Vero Beach winter
home back in 1936. She reached out to her neighbors,
sending them postcards to let them know she was
starting an art group and they were invited.
From the solid core of A.E. “Bean” Backus, Gladys Damerow,
Agnes Gay, Rosalee Taylor Hume, Ruth Jett, Mrs. John
Coker, Beverly Michael Graves, Hubert Graves, Garnet Hanshaw,
Jeanette Merriman, Col. Will Platten, Dorothy Poole,
Leo Schlitt and Mary Taylor Young came the Vero Beach Art
Club of today, then known as the Vero Beach Sketch Club.
There was a long and winding road between then and now,
but a succession of devoted artists and art enthusiasts kept
the train of progress moving.
Trish Bridwell, a member of the club since 1963, has
compiled a comprehensive history of the club and plans to
donate the material to the Indian River County Library. She
explained that for the first 10 years, the club members would
meet every Monday in the winter months to discuss art and
magazine articles and newspaper stories of interest to artists.
By 1947, the formal organization of the group, spearheaded
by Elena K. Meade and Gladys Damerow, had begun. T.A.
Peebles, Peter A. Lindquist, J.H. Coon, Mrs. Mark Jefferson,
Mrs. J.L. Hutchinson and Martin Hoag joined in the effort,
getting the bylaws drafted in 1951 and changing the name to
Vero Beach Art Club in 1953. Re-incorporation papers were
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Members of the Vero Beach Art Club look at a painting by Ellis Buckner Jr., one of the Highwaymen, who spoke at a recent club meeting.