Sending text to LCD display of AM3517EVM

We have a new board derived from the AM3517EVM eval board.  We build Linux from the TI Gingerbread 2.3.4 distribution using our derivative of the am3517_evm_defconfig configuration (i.e without Android).

We have two questions regarding how our Linux application can display text or graphics on the LCD display.

1) Our preferred approach is to send text to the LCD display.  We would like to prepare strings in a C program, and call some routine that makes them appear on the console.  This could be either in an auto-scrolling mode, or even some mode where we specify fonts, position, etc.  How can this be done?

2) Alternatively, as a backup plan, we can live with displaying a previously prepared graphics image (e.g. JPG, GIF, ...) to the LCD display, if that's significantly easier than displaying text.  How is that done?

Thanks,
Ron