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’ little red art table.
“She was Mrs. Yeomans to me then, but she’s Barbara now,” she says. “Barbara was messy, and as a kid, I was scared of messy.” Brannon’s mother was a quilter, a medium of precision—even cuts and stitches, crisp patterns followed without aberration. Barbara’s house was filled with bits of papier-mâché, sewing machines, and hunks of clay made from flour and salt. “She always encouraged me to explore and be curious,” Brannon says, remembering how Barbara would prompt her to craft without fear or expectation.
That same instinct helped shape much of what Fort Myers’ art scene has become: experimental, open, grassroots. A painter and printmaker, Barbara wasn’t the city’s 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: “Sustained intensity = ecstasy.”
1 of 2
Barbara Yeomans’ Banyan Ariel Root/Courtesy Jane Yeomans
barbara yeomans fort myers artist printmaker banyan aerial root
2 of 2
Courtesy Jane Yeomans
barbara yeomans fort myers artist printmaker and husband
A lifelong maker, Barbara forged her identity as an artist after the sudden passing of her husband, Sherrill. Together with friends, the pair played a major role in founding Alliance for the Arts.
She didn’t fully claim the title of artist until later in life, but no one remembers a time when she wasn’t creating. Barbara passed away in January, but what she built, with no blueprint, still resonates.
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.
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—made from circular bits of tin foil—alongside a collection of crushed cans, old jewelry and bottle caps hung from string.
Other materials were less obvious. “She always smiled when she talked about her work,” Brannon said. “I’d ask what something was, and she’d 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.”
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. “She made all kinds of things for us—all of our outfits, all these crazy toys,” Erika says. Barbara hosted fashion shows, went into the kids’ 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 and Ikki Matsumoto.
By the mid-1970s, the Yeomanses were regulars at dinner parties with Fort Myers’ “First Lady of Theater” Barbara B. Mann, local choral director Tom Walters and Edison Community College president David Robinson. “That was some of the original group that got together and said, ‘This region needs some type of entity to promote the arts,’ and out of those original conversations, sprang the Alliance in 1975,” her son, Adam, recalls.
1 of 3
Barbara Yeomans’ Flare/Courtesy Jane Yeomans
barbara yeomans fort myers artist printmaker flare
2 of 3
Courtesy Jane Yeomans
barbara yeomans fort myers artist printmaker as a young woman
3 of 3
Barbara Yeomans’ Twice Over/Courtesy Jane Yeomans
barbara yeomans fort myers artist printmaker twice over
Alliance for the Arts would become one of the region’s central cultural institutions. But in the beginning, there wasn’t 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—the beginnings of a student theater program. Co-founding artists put on shows and taught classes in whatever spaces were available.
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—leaves, string, scraps of paper—into a moment of impact, fit well with her crafty nature.
In the years that followed, Barbara worked constantly and exhibited often. As the Alliance’s 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’ artistic infrastructure. Among them were current Alliance board president Carolyn Gora and her husband, Bruce, the architect behind Alliance for the Arts’ current-day building.
In 1996, Barbara and Bruce, along with Jeff Mudgett of Parker Mudgett Smith Architects, launched Art House, a long-running pop-up exhibition series featuring one-night-only shows that benefited local arts organizations and scholarships. “They would empty a house out, then fill the place up with work by one or two artists,” Carolyn says. Often, Barbara’s work took center stage.
“She’d always say, ‘I don’t know how to stop. Art is what I do,’” Adam says. When she could no longer wind the heavy wheel of the printing press, she adapted. She’d lay out the paper, transfer sheets and ink-stained botanicals on the pavement in the garage, then drive over them with her car to achieve the pressure her muscles couldn’t muster.
Since Barbara’s passing, the stories told about her can make it seem as though she arrived in Fort Myers with a plan. She was a founding member of Alliance for the Arts; an organizer behind the city’s first pop-up art shows; a Pace Center for Girls, Lee’s Grande Dame honoree; a supporter of FSW; and an internationally exhibited artist. The piano in the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center? That was hers, too. But what today reads as milestones often began as small projects, friendships or experiments. It was messy.
“I learned a big skill from Barbara—one I don’t think I came back to until my late 40s,” Brannon says. “She taught me to explore being messy and what that means, and what good can come from it.”
Barbara Yeomans’ Balancing/Courtesy Jane Yeomans
barbara yeomans fort myers artist printmaker balancing
Barbara’s artistic practice was dynamic and experimental, blending media, styles and techniques. Her daughter, Jane, says she continued to create until her final days. Her last project was a series of hand-painted Christmas cards for friends—an annual tradition.