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I checked two major items off of my bucket list last week – driving to Maine, and visiting Ashley Bryan on Little Cranberry Island. When Deb Taylor asked if I wanted to drive up with her, it was a no brainer. Prior to our departure, a large hurricane had barreled up the east coast causing minor damage to the island but briefly leaving people without power and water. The day that we drove up was perfectly sunny and calm.

The farthest north I had ever driven was to Boston back in 1999 when my mother took me on a college tour. BU was one of my choices. I had never given New England much thought outside of that. Looking back now, I don’t have any real explanation for my disregard of the great north, other than the fact that I didn’t personally know anyone from the region. In my mind, New York City was the edge of the world.

The first thing I noticed when we reached Maine was a purplish tinge that hung on the bare bark of trees lining the highway. I thought I was hallucinating from having been on the road too long with too little sleep, but when I asked Deb to confirm what I was seeing, she agreed. The trees were purple!

We spent the night in Ellsworth and then headed out about half an hour east to catch the ferry in Bar Harbor the next morning. Bar Harbor was the picture of Maine I carried in my head from Time of Wonder. Our little ferry (a.k.a. the mail boat) carried us across to Islesford (a.k.a. Little Cranberry Island) in about fifteen minutes.

Robin and Dean waited for us at the dock with a small wheelbarrow-like carrier for our luggage. Our tour of the island began at “the mall” a restaurant, art gallery, tourist shop and rest stop all in one. There at the dock restaurant, I ate my very first Maine lobster roll. Heaven. I also caught a glimpse of Ashley! Deb and I went over to make our presence known and Ashley immediately invited us to come over to his house after lunch.

The house we stayed in was a larger late 19^th century rusticator. It was a five bedroom country house that sat near the water and slept ten people. There were eight of us in the house for the week – two librarians, three teachers, a teenager, an artist, and a family friend with a wicked sense of deadpan humor. The wood was exposed, very much like Jonathan’s family treasure from Building Our House, and the house was decorated with lovely island accents and old family photographs.

I could barely wait to get to Ashley.

His charming island house was about a ten minute walk from where we all stayed. As with most houses on the island, it remained unlocked with a “come-on-in” policy. Deb and I headed over on our first day and were given a preview of his latest book, a collection of Langston Hughes poems (I won’t be more specific in the interest of publication privacy). Seeing the cut paper illustrations up close was a gift. The week we arrived was the week of his opening. Due to the hurricane damage, the big event had to be postponed. A tree fell near the museum that housed the work, but did not do any damage to the building, thank goodness.

The rest of my days were spent reading and drawing. I woke each day around 8AM to a breezy 74 degrees or so. We would have coffee near the window while Abby worked on her 1000 piece puzzle. Robin would knit, and the rest of the house would quietly read. In the evenings we played trivia and card games. After breakfast, I would head out with my sketchbook to explore and spend time with Ashley.

On my first day alone with Ashley, we compared sketchbooks. I shared my drawings from Africa and he shared his drawer full of sketchbooks from Germany and France. He shared his cut paper collages and I showed him my digital ones. His entire house was a museum. The walls were lined with books, toys, weavings, prints, and paintings. Airplanes hung from his ceilings. When I arrived, he was preparing a canvas to paint in the garden. We collected his morning materials and headed out. I drew. He painted.

A few hours later, we came in for lunch and I was able to meet Ashley’s nieces and nephews. Ashley graciously prepared bread, cold cuts, and cheese for us to lunch on. The big treat of the day, cranberry soda mixed with orange juice! We discussed the Kara Walker sculpture and the insensitivity to things misunderstood along with education and family. It was a lovely afternoon.

My observation of the day was that all of Ashley’s relatives had the “ey” sound at the end of their names. No doubt stemming from his famoly’s love of music. Once the table was cleared Ashley brought down the work from his latest book to which he exclaimed “Gather ‘round children!”. It was time to hear some poetry. And all of us “children” obliged and sat to listen and admire the vivid cut paper collages.

We got a call after lunch saying that the museum was open briefly and we could head down to see the exhibition. I gathered Robin and the crew and we all bounded over to have a personal tour of the exhibit from Ashley. What a treat. The walls sung with color and art. There was a timeline of Ashley’s art and his 92 years of life, many selections from his hundreds of sketchbooks, a fantastic display of his handmade puppets, his amazing sea glass windows, and of course, original art from many of his popular books, including “Beautiful Blackbird”, “Let it Shine”, and “The Dancing Granny”.
The next day, after breakfast and reading (I made it through half of Octavian Nothing), I said goodbye to my friends and struck out to draw on the island. The docks were full of activity, so I plopped myself down and began a drawing of the Cranberry Isle Fisherman’s Co-op. It was the end of the work morning, so most were packing up and heading home. While drawing I met Stephanie Alley. After a bit of conversation I realized she was a famous Captain on the island and gave lobster tours on her boat. The next morning, I grabbed Abby and headed on down for a lobster boat adventure. Robin had mentioned Stephanie’s tours the night before and serendipity brought us together.

After our morning adventure, I found myself back at Ashley’s house. I hadn’t planned to bother him that day, so I sat outside on the curb to draw his home. No more than fifteen minutes had gone by when he and his dear friend, Suze popped out of the house to head over to the museum and greet fans. I was still drawing when he returned home an hour later. Being extremely hospitable, Ashley didn’t just disappear inside his home. He came out to make a few notes from the painting he began the day before, which ended up being my cue to come on in for a spell. Knowing that he had already had a long day, I excused myself shortly after he settled inside.

My last day on the island, I was itching to make a strong portrait of Ashley. I struck out to his house mid day and let myself in to an empty house. Though his door was open to me, I still felt strange hanging out in his empty home. I went outside and finished an earlier drawing and by the time I was done, Ashley appeared. It had been another long day for Ashley and he was expecting more guests, so I didn’t force myself. We had dinner plans at the house that evening, so I headed back to read more of Octavian, which turned into a delicious nap in the sun next to the picture window.

Dinnertime came and we all rallied around Ashley. Dean prepared a wonderful brisket that he had brought over by the mail boat. We had been all abuzz over it throughout the week. Ashley sat and announced, “okay, draw me!”. No pressure there. I made three miserable attempts at a portrait and gave up. During dinner, when the plates were cleared and dessert was brought out (Robin prepared a delicious lemon ice box pie), I grabbed my drawing book and began again, finally capturing Ashley’s spirit.

Deb and I said our goodbyes the next morning and headed back to Bar Harbor, passing along the boat ticket to Robin and Dean’s daughter, Julie. What a treat. “A Visit with Ashley Bryan” will be on display until September 20th on Little Cranberry Island. If you can head over, I highly recommend it.

Tomorrow I will be working with researcher Charles Limb in his research on creative improvisation. Me and a few of my MICA illustration colleagues were invited last week to come to Johns Hopkins and draw while having our brains scanned. Ummmm, yes, please! It’s my Sheldon Cooper dream come true.

Mr. Limb gave a TedTalk last year on his research with jazz musicians and rappers. The premise is the same…perform with a controlled piece and then perform while improvising a piece while in an FMRI scanner. The illustrators that are participating will draw photographs exactly as they see it and then draw caricatures of that photograph. Controlled action versus improvisation.

Here is a video of Mr. Limb’s TedTalk, “Your Brain on Improv”. I will post thoughts on my experience tomorrow~

One of my dreams has been to use my location drawing/visual journalism work as final artwork. I lived that dream through Bird, and have taken it to another level by  illustrating this year’s Baltimore Transmodern Festival poster. A lot of my most interesting projects find me serendipitously, including BIRD. This job was no exception.

When I moved to Baltimore back in June of 2011, I took a trip to the Baltimore Museum of Art to familiarize myself with the art scene in my new hood. While there, I came upon the video work of Stephanie M. Barber. She was working on “jhana and the rats of james olds or 31 days/31 videos”. Of course, I partcipated, and upon leaving, ran into Stephanie in the hallway (she was taking a lunch break). She noticed that I looked a lot longer at the work than most visitors, to which I responded, “I’m an artist. We speak the same language.” From there we talked about MICA (where she also teaches!). One thing led to another and we became facebook freinds. After seeing my Visual Journalism work week after week, Stephanie invited me to create a poster for the Baltimore Transmodern Festival. The pay was modest, but my poster will be all over the city (flattering of the ego always works for me). So, me and one of my awesome Visual Journalism students, Jordan Jones, went down to the Current Gallery, sat in the back alley (where the festival will be held), and drew. From there, I did a little photoshop magic and came up with this:

I did the drawing in one sitting in my giant Archie Grand sketchbook. From there, I took tracing paper and drew a bunch of tiny colorful balls (to represent summer festivusness). I then did lettering on a separate layer of tracing paper and multiplied ever’thang in photoshop. Total job took about ten hours. Yay.

Head on over to Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast and have breakfast with me. There’s plenty of food and some art to boot! Thanks to Jules for pestering inviting me to share my work with her wonderful readers .

Also, Baltimore City Paper is going to publish my students’ drawings from Occupy Baltimore! SO excited!

Today we headed to Fells Point to draw. It was warm and sunny out which led to a couple of drawings I am really happy with. I am drawing with a Pentel brush pen in an Archie Grand Jumbo sketchbook which opens up to a generous spread of 16″ x 24″.

The tree is shaded with a photoshop brush. The three images to the left of the tree are done separately and dropped into photoshop.

My students take their time in getting scanned work to me, but here is a link to the Visual Journalism Blog. You can also check out the blog of Aaron Provost, who updates his location work weekly. Go Aaron!

I submitted a proposal to speak at the United Way’s Early Literacy Symposium here in Atlanta and they have accepted me! The symposium is on April 15th at the Loudermilk Center here in Atlanta.

The Early Literacy Symposium brings together more than 300 education professionals from early care and education through 3^rd grade levels.  The Symposium features the latest innovations in literacy instruction, research and practice to foster children’s early reading proficiency.  Reading proficiency by the end of third grade is widely recognized as a critical educational benchmark.  This year’s theme is Extending Conversations With Children – exploring ways that meaningful talk, while employing new words and concepts, can be intellectually stimulating to children of all ages and contribute to early literacy and academic success.

Who attends the Symposium?

Teachers of young children from birth through 3^rd grade

Program directors and administrators

Early Reading First grant teachers and project leaders

Georgia Pre-K teachers

Curriculum and instructional coordinators

Early childhood specialists

University students in ECE and K-3 programs

Clearly I will be more along the lines of entertainment at this symposium, but as always, I will try and give my audience something they can use in their classrooms outside of what I do in my work. Hopefully my interest in visual communication will be of interest to the educators and childhood specialists in the bunch. My proposed talk will be given in two parts:

Visual Storytelling and Making Connections

Part one is about my work, process, and goals in creating images for picturebooks stressing the way I use of reference to support the ideas in my work; and part two will focus on strategies using visual aids and technology that teachers can implement in their classrooms to help enrich and support the learning process.

from my talk at the 23rd Annual Conference on Children’s Literature,
“Framing Social Issues in Books for Children”

A special “thank you” to Jan Miller Burkins, literacy consultant and co-founder of Literacyhead.com for involving me with UWMA. It should be fun~

I just returned from a three day trip with the National Black Arts Festival exploring Gullah Culture.

Gullah – one of a group of people of African ancestry that live in the Sea Islands and coastal areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida; the creolized language of the Gullahs, based on English and several other African languages and spoken in Sea Island communities. The Gullah language is highly similar to Sierra Leone “Krio”. “Gullah” has been attributed to the Gola, a small tribe on the Sierra Leone-Liberian border where the Mende and Vai territories merge.

This past weekend was Penn Center Heritage Days on St. Helena Island. Dr. Collette Hopkins, director of Education and Public Programs, invited my mother and me to travel with the group as artist in residence. We were transported back in time when we roomed in the Hampton House, built in1904; named after the historic Hampton University.

On Friday I helped prepare and facilitate the Scholastic CSK Award book fair which serviced about 400 children in one day! Every child who attended was free to selected a FREE title from about 30 different CSK Award winning titles. On Saturday, the fair was open to families who were attending the festival. I sold books to many people, including a couple who traveled all the way from Vancouver! I also met, well renowned artist, Jonathan Green, posing here with me in my favorite TEACH THE BABIES tee by coup d’etat BROOKLYN, and holding a blackbird shadow puppet made by Allen with the Center for Puppetry Arts. This year’s featured book fair title was Ashley Bryan’s BEAUTIFUL BLACKBIRD.

“White Breeze” 1995
Oil on Canvas 48″ x 60″
Jonathan Green
Copyright Jonathan Green Studios, Inc. 1995

Because I was working on Friday and Saturday I wasn’t able to walk the island and visit the local art gallery. I did; however, get to enjoy the fish fry on our first evening there, take in the community parade that was held Saturday morning, and a couple of the acts that performed on the main stage of the festival. The volunteers and staff of NBAF were some of the nicest and highly spirited ladies I have met. We had a ball.