{"id":8970,"date":"2018-10-17T18:21:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T22:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=8970"},"modified":"2018-10-17T18:21:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T22:21:27","slug":"ashley-bryan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/10\/17\/ashley-bryan\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashley Bryan: Pioneering Illustrator Of African Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1950s, when Ashley Bryan first came by boat to summer on Maine\u2019s Great Cranberry Island, he recalled, \u201cI had my boxes and things, someone reached for it and passed it to another and then to another till it reached the dock at the top. And I said, \u2018Oh my, it\u2019s a chain of hands, just as it is at home.\u2019 So I was immediately at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

By home, the celebrated African American children\u2019s book author and illustrator was thinking of the Bronx, New York, where he grew up during the Depression. Born in 1923, he was the second of six children of immigrant parents from Antigua who taught him \u201cnever let anything stop you.\u201d They lived in tenement apartments \u201cin which we knew everyone on the four or five stories. And everyone looked after everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I knew I\u2019d always be coming back,\u201d Bryan told me in 2012 of the Cranberry Isles. \u201cBecause it\u2019s like the tenement house. Everyone had this outreach to help anyone in need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ashley<\/a>
Ashley Bryan, endpapers for “Beautiful Blackbird,” collage of cut colored paper with mixed media on paper, ca. 2002. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That spirit runs through Bryan’s children\u2019s books\u2014from traditional African tales to his own rhyming verse to collections of African American poetry and spirituals\u2014which earned him the American Library Association\u2019s Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2012. He is among the first\u2014and sometimes credited with being the first\u2014African Americans to both write and illustrate a published children\u2019s book. And his picture books of African tales were among the first published for children in the United States. His 2016 book \u201cFreedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan,\u201d won a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Honors.<\/p>\n

“It means a lot to me to open up aspects of black culture to people,\u201d Bryan has said. \u201cI hope that my work with the African tales will be … like a bridge reaching across distances of time and space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPainter and Poet: the Art of Ashley Bryan,\u201d<\/a> an exhibition of his art, is on view at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine from Aug. 3 to Nov. 25. Originally organized by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, the show ranges from sketches he drew while serving in World War II to his earliest books of African folktales to large puppets he has made from things that washed ashore on the Little Cranberry Island, where he still lives.<\/p>\n

\"Ashley<\/a>
Ashley Bryan at \u201cPainter and Poet: the Art of Ashley Bryan” exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art, Maine. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After graduating high school in 1940, Bryan studied for two years at Cooper Union, \u201cthe only black in my class,\u201d after another New York art school turned him down saying \u201cIt would be a waste to give a scholarship to a colored person.\u201d Drafted into a World War II Army stevedores unit in 1943, he landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, two days after the D-Day invasion to help unload ships. \u201cI kept my drawing materials in my gas mask,\u201d Bryan told me in 2012. \u201cI would draw any opportunity I got. It was my way of survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ashley<\/a>
Ashley Bryan, WWII sketch: “No mattress, reading magazines, or papers,” pen and ink on paper, 1944.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a thing that you suppress,\u201d he said of the war. Seeking \u201cto understand why man chooses war,\u201d when he returned home to New York after his discharge, he studied philosophy at Columbia University. And he attended Skowhegan School of Art on scholarship during its first summer in 1946. \u201cThat experience, coming from the Second World War, coming from New York City, and entering the landscape of Lake Wesserunsett, and painting outdoors was so invigorating for me,\u201d he said. \u201cSo from then on I returned [to Maine] in summers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryan taught at various schools around New York and beginning in 1974 at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He\u2019d long illustrated books to give to family and friends, but was unable to interest publishers until editor Jean Karl at Atheneum sought him out in 1962. For \u201cMoon, For What Do You Wait?\u201d (1967), the first of many books they produced together, Bryan carved folksy linocuts of birds and gardens and mountains to go with poems by the Indian author Rabindranath Tagore.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe kept after me through all the years,\u201d Bryan said of Karl, \u201cwanting to know, \u2018What are you working on for me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ashley<\/a>
Ashley Bryan, Front cover illustration for “Walk Together Children: Black American Spirituals,” linoleum cut on rice paper, 1974. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bryan varies his style, tapping into his knowledge of art history as well as his experiences traveling to England, Italy, Spain, Germany, Yugoslavia, Greece, India, Kenya, Uganda. The result is medieval linocuts for collections of African spirituals like \u201cWalk Together Children\u201d (1974), earth-toned tempera paintings inspired by African masks for 1970s African tales like \u201cThe Adventures of Aku,\u201d bright child-like watercolors for a collection of his own verse, \u201cSing to the Sun\u201d (1993), cut-paper collages for the Zambian folk tale \u201cBeautiful Blackbird\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n

His books speak of youthful exuberance and shenanigans, of dance and play. They\u2019re soothing and marvel at creation. Their foundation is a desire to honor and teach African and African American traditions in a context of respect for all cultures and traditions. \u201cThe United States means people from all over the world,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve offered the best of their backgrounds into the American culture, which has made the American culture unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Bryan retired from Dartmouth in 1988, he settled in Islesford on Little Cranberry Island. He decorated his home with his paintings, stained glass he\u2019s made from sea glass, puppets he\u2019s assembled from scraps and driftwood and shells he\u2019s found on the beach. The Ashley Bryan Center’s Storyteller Pavilion<\/a> was completed on part of his property there last year to publicly showcase his art, including the sea glass windows.<\/p>\n

\"Ashley<\/a>
Ashley Bryan, “Ewunike”(\u201cFragrant,\u201d East Africa) puppet, found objects and mixed media, 2005. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bryan has become such a fixture of the island that in March 2012, Town Meeting voted to rename the Islesford elementary school after him. He didn\u2019t know it was on the agenda and it came as a surprise when someone called him that day with the news. \u201cI was in tears I was so moved by that,\u201d Bryan told me not long after. \u201cThey were having lunch at the time so I went and thanked them. The children immediately took down the Islesford School sign and painted their own on a white board with red letters: Ashley Bryan School.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Ashley<\/a>
Ashley Bryan, \u201cOh, when the children sing in peace\u201d for “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” collage of cut colored paper on paper, 2006. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1950s, when Ashley Bryan first came by boat to summer on Maine\u2019s Great Cranberry Island, he recalled, \u201cI had my boxes and things, someone reached for it and passed it to another and then to another till it reached the dock at the top. And I said, \u2018Oh my, it\u2019s a chain of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107],"tags":[265,294,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8970"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9030,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8970\/revisions\/9030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}