Front and center — that’s where 12-year-old Brandon Gallmeyer will be when the Christmas parade steps off this Saturday.
Brandon won an art contest whose grand prize was the honor of serving as the grand marshal of the parade, which begins at 3 p.m. on the second day of the Howey-in-the Hills Christmas Festival.
“I feel like it’s a masterpiece,” Brandon said of his picture of Santa and the reindeer rounding the city’s historical water tower.
Serving as grand marshal is “pretty awesome — I’m not used to all this attention,” he said.
Brandon’s artwork is featured on the cover of the festival’s program and is depicted on T-shirts to be sold during the festival.
It also was posted on an electronic billboard on U.S. Highway 441 in Tavares near Florida Hospital Waterman. Brandon’s father Michael, said the family “climbed in our truck. We had to go see it.”
Brandon, a sixth grader at Tavares Middle School, created the picture when “I was just thinking of Santa and saw the water tower at the same time. Growing up, I saw the water tower a lot.”
He said he enjoys drawing the Marvel comic book characters, dragons, horses, people and house plans.
“I just think it up in my mind,” he said.
He and his dad painted a mural that includes trees and clouds on the walls in his bedroom.
“He can look at a picture of something without tracing it and is able to create it,” said Michael, who went to college on an art scholarship. “He knows perspective and shading already.”
Brandon has always been creative. He got started with a pudding pack that ended up being finger painting on the walls of his bedroom when he was 2.
“We still joke about that,” said his mother Candace, a teacher at Minneola Elementary School.
Today, Brandon’s bedroom décor includes a Christmas motif — four small to medium Christmas trees decorated with lights and beads, lights strung about his drum set, wrapping paper on his bed and an ornament and beads at the top of his floor lamp.
“Christmas is my favorite time of year,” he said. “I love wrapping presents.”
Brandon, an honor-roll student, is part of the Tavares Middle School Band. He plays percussion, which includes any type of drum, the xylophone, tambourine and bells. He said he plans to try out for the jazz band for next year.
“When I grow up, I either want to be a musician or an architect,” he said.
Brandon spends his free time playing video games and with the family’s animals, two geese and two potbelly pigs. He loves them all, but Rudy, a 7-year-old potbelly pig, is closest to his heart.
“Her favorite treat is candy canes,” he said. “That, and watermelon.”
Howey’s festival is set for 5 to 8 p.m. Friday and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in Griffin Park at the intersection of Lakeshore Boulevard and East Central Avenue.