Ashley Bryan
Ashley Bryan, "Rain Coming" from Sing to the Sun, Harper Collins, 1992, watercolor on paper, Lent by the Artist
Ashley Bryan was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1923. He made his first book in kindergarten when a progressive teacher had the class create their own books of the letters of the alphabet. He went on to art school at Cooper Union and studied Philosophy at Columbia University but after graduation immediately went to work as an illustrator. The editor Jean Karl encouraged his work and he soon retold and illustrated his first collection of African stories titled The Ox of the Wonderful Horns and Other African Folktales.
In his work as a compiler and reteller of traditional folk-tales and illustrator of children's books, Bryan has explored the African-American experience from the angle of the Black Oral Tradition. He works largely with black American poetry and spirituals. Bryan is also a poet himself and has created and beautifully illustrated his own poems in Sing to the Sun. He is a spirited performer of his own and other's works and uses a dramatic voice and puppets as props. Bryan currently lives and works on a small island off the coast of Maine, where he continues to create books that delight children and adults of all ages and ethnicities.
