The Ellsworth American - Islesford Artist Tells His Story

Islesford Artist Tells His Story

Written by Letitia Baldwin

Thursday, February 12, 2009

With a sketchbook in hand, Ashley Bryan likes to stroll on Little Cranberry Island’s Sand Beach.—PHOTO COURTESY OF ATHENEUM BOOKS/BILL MCGUINNESS

“I cannot remember a time when I have not been drawing and painting.”

A mussel shell and barnacles make up the striking face on one of Ashley Bryan’s puppets created from material found along the island’s shores.—PHOTO COURTESY OF ATHENEUM BOOKS/BILL MCGUINNESS

Ashley Bryan’s life story opens with those words. Those who know the award-winning island artist and author well attest to what he says. Composing a line in his mind, fashioning a puppet with peach-pit eyes, painting a neighbor’s riotous dahlias, playing a gospel hymn on his recorder and making window panels from frosted sea glass are all part of the daily rhythm of his life and inner impulse that has fired him to create since growing up in New York City’s the Bronx during the Depression.

For over 20 years, Bryan has made Little Cranberry Island his permanent home. For close to half a century, the internationally known African-American spent summers on the porkchop-shaped isle three miles from Mount Desert Island. He has produced hundreds of oil paintings and illustrated several dozen books of African proverbs, folktales and African-American poems and spirituals. He has won the Coretta Scott King Award three times for his outstanding contributions to children’s and young adult literature and is the 2009 recipient of the American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal previously awarded to E.B. White, Beverly Cleary, Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle and others.

Just how Bryan came to live on Little Cranberry, numbering only 100 year-round residents, and the 85-year-old artist’s story can be found in “Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life’s Song” (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2009, $18.99) published early last month. Like its author, the 58-page autobiography is celebratory in spirit. Written for all ages, the book pulsates with color through the vibrant artwork and vivid portraits and landscape photos shot by Bryan’s good friend and fellow islander Bill McGuinness.

Little Cranberry Island’s award-winning artist Ashley Bryan has published a memoir, “Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life’s Song.”—PHOTO COURTESY OF ATHENEUM BOOKS/BILL MCGUINNESS

Brian Pinkney, a two-time Caldecott Honor winner, has illustrated highly-praised picture books including “The Faithful Friend,” “In the Time of the Drums” and “Duke Ellington.” Pinkney and his wife and frequent collaborator Andrea have read with their children and treasure many of the Bryans’ children’s books.

From “Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry.”

“A visionary artist,” is how the Pinkneys describe the Maine island artist, “who carefully stitches together words and images to create exquisitely rendered books that, like well-crafted quilts, inspire and comfort all who wrap themselves in their beauty.”

Originally from the British West Indies island of Antigua, Bryan’s parents imbued their six children’s lives with the color, music and dance of Caribbean culture. His mother filled their “railroad” apartment with plants and bouquets of crepe-paper flowers where there was no light. His father loved birds and kept as many as 100 canaries, finches, warblers and parakeets at one time in the home.

“My mother would say, ‘If I want any attention around here, I’d have to get into a cage!’” writes Bryan, whose parents encouraged his creativity and bookmaking begun in kindergarten.

At age 16, Bryan graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx. With an art portfolio in hand, he approached various art schools. At one, the interviewer said his artwork was the best that he had ever seen, but that it would be a waste to award a scholarship to a “coloured person.”

“I remember my parents saying that if you are doing something creative and constructive, don’t let anyone or anything ever stop you,” he recalls in his book.

Bryan never did.

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