About Our Cover Artist

You’ve seen Bryan Hand’s work in The Beachcomber before. He has designed ads for the Red Bar in Grayton Beach as well as the now-defunct Sea Bar. His lively drawings adorned the covers of the first two CDs by Dread Clampitt.

“I did Geaux Juice, too,” he says. “That was the first time I used color.” Hand designed all of their stickers and T-shirts, too, except for “the one with the skull.”

Hand moved here from Paris, Illiois and has drawn his entire life. He considers his 2001 meeting with folk art great Woodie Long to be the turning point in his artistic career. Long encouraged Hand to start painting; prior to that, our cover artist focused on pen-and-ink and pencil drawings.

“It was one of the biggest things that ever happened to me,” says Hand. “He’s just an inspiring and motivating human being. I met him when I was working at the House of Blues in Orlando. They were asking for volunteers for the folk art festival, and Woodie introduced me to a lot of the legends. My wife and I got to work as his assistants. He inspired us to move back here. A huge, huge influence.”

Hand’s logo designs have been commissioned by a number of local businesses, and the front door of the Red Bar is a work of B. Hand art in itself.

Many of Hand’s paintings and drawings—you can check them out at www.bhandart.com --stemmed from his love of music, especially “jam bands” like Dread Clampitt and the WaCo Ramblers. He considers Long and Billie Gaffrey his artistic mentors and cites underground comix greats R. Crumb and Rick (Zippy the Pinhead) Griffin as major influences.

Hand lives in Santa Rosa Beach with his wife Alison and their three-year-old, Karena.