October 29, 2007 - Win An Original Highwaymen Painting

Residents can entering a drawing to win an original Highwayman painting, while helping to support arts education, as the St. Lucie County Cultural Affairs Council presents the Highwaymen Florida Artists Hall of Fame Award Celebration on Sunday, Nov. 4 from noon – 4 p.m.

The raffle is part of a weekend-long celebration of the Highwaymen artists, a group of local African-American landscape painters who sold their art in the 1950s by peddling some 100,000 original art works from the trunks of their cars. Artist James Gibson has donated an original painting to be raffled off Sunday.

Tickets are $10 each and are on sale now through Sunday at the Cultural Affairs Office, inside the Fort Pierce Community Center, 600 North Indian River Drive.  Proceeds from the raffle will benefit the Cultural Affairs Council (CAC) Youth Scholarship Fund, which provides after-school art programming and scholarships for students to attend college and major in art.

Additionally, Mary Ann Carroll has donated a painting that will be raffled off for the CAC's Lucie Awards, which will take place in February 2008. Tickets for her painting will be available at Sunday’s event.

Sunday's event will commemorate the Highwaymen's induction into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame by granting each artist a replicate of the original award. Several of the Highwaymen will be selling their work and examples of art painted by the deceased Highwaymen will be on display. 

For more information on this event or the St. Lucie County Cultural Affairs Council call (772) 462-1767.

As part of a Highwaymen weekend, several artists including Al Black, Kevin Hair, Isaac Knight and Johnny Stovall will be presenting their artwork in the front of the Fort Pierce Library on Saturday, Nov. 3 from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.

The art show will be held in conjunction with a program by author Gary Monroe in the meeting room of the Library at 1 p.m. Monroe is the author of ''The Highwaymen'' and ''Harold Newton: The Original Highwayman.'' The author will have a book signing and the artists will be signing the books and greeting the public. The artwork will be available for purchase.

The Fort Pierce Library is located at 101 Melody Lane. For more information, please call Vicki at (772) 462-2787.

These programs are free and registration is not required.