BY BRIAN HOUCK
The brothers Kole and Kyle Trent from Nugtopia are a force to be reckoned with. Kyle, the older brother is 25 years old and handles the business side of things allowing Kole, 23, to focus solely on his art. The trent brothers grew up with paintings by Michael Goddard in their childhood home. Goddard is an artist who would bring to life olives from martini glasses, giving them arms and legs and have them moving all over his pieces. Kole drew inspiration from Goddard and would later do for the cannabis flower what Goddard did to the olives. Kole is all self-taught and has been a gifted artist from a young age. This dates back to his senior year of high school when he started painting the bottom of his surfboards, which his friends would see and and ask Kole to do theirs. Kyle, recalled that his brothers paintings were, “well above where someone should be that has no formal training.” Kole talked his parents into letting him pursue art during a semester break before he was supposed to start studying nursing. As his brother Kyle remembers, “he did a bunch of shows, a bunch of different events around the state, and within that six months he did well enough that he could open up his first gallery.” About three years ago, their mother Patricia had been diagnosed with benign nodules in her breast tissue. She went to Colorado to receive medical cannabis treatment and when she came back to Florida for the surgery to remove the nodules the surgeons couldn’t find the tumors at all. The two nodules had been reduced to the size of, “grains of sand.” “Thats really where it had all derived from, was our mother and her journey through that and Kole wanted to continue to help people like our mother was helped, just the way that he can.”
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Kyle Trent explained his brother Kole, “wanted to take the taboo out of the industry because of how it affected our family and helped our mother.” The only way he knew how to do that was through his artwork. Kole painted a piece called “OG Kush” which turned out to be the genesis of his work bringing the flower of cannabis to life. Kole created a whole line of cannabis characters with different looks and personalities to go along with their individual strain. He also paints his characters in different scenes like his painting Maui Waui’s Luau, in which all of his cannabis characters are on the beach surrounded by palm trees having a Luau. Kyle’s favorite piece is one that Kole had painted him after his dog, a Bishon Frise named Snoopy, passed away. It depicts that classic Snoopy the dog cartoon character, in cannabis form of course, laying on top of his dog house looking to the sky surrounded by a galaxy scene. All of Kole’s paintings are three-dimensional. They may not physically pop off the canvas but the layering of acrylic paint that Kole uses make his pieces come to life when you put on threedimensional-glasses. Kole does most of his work on canvas but recently he has expanded to much larger surfaces. Kole has been commissioned by the City of Cocoa Beach to paint six murals across the town as part of the Cocoa Beach Mural Project. In the future, the Trent brothers are looking to expand Nugtopia to reach as many people as they can by breaking the stigma and helping people to see cannabis in a different light so others can be helped just like their mother. You can find Nugtopia’s work online at nugtopia.net, on their Instagram @Nugtopiaart, or at their galley in Cocoa Beach.
