The Ashley Bryan Art Series Conference 2005

"WALK TOGETHER CHILDREN: RHYTHMS PAST and PRESENT"

About the Conference

Ashley Bryan recognizes the importance of early reading in a child’s social and academic development. It is also important for children of color, and especially African-American children to read about and to see images of themselves depicted in a positive light. Ashley Bryan understands that literature and art are effective tools to help improve the lives of children.

The “Ashley Bryan Project” is the vision of Mr. Bryan with a two-fold mission: 1) to have a home where original works of art, including drafts, manuscripts, books, sketches, illustrations and other materials by children’s authors and artists are deposited and 2) to encourage research by authors, artists and others who are interested in promoting children’s literature and learning. With the intent of increasing children’s interest in and appreciation of literature and art, Ashley Bryan has challenged the Broward County African-American Research Library and Cultural Center (AARLCC) to create programs that make his vision a reality.

The AARLCC answers that challenge with two programs: “The Ashley Bryan Art Collection”
(ABAC) and the “Ashley Bryan Art Series Conference” (ABASC).

The ABAC is a collection of artwork of illustrators of African descent. The ABAC has as its core: eight original pieces by Ashley Bryan that were donated to the AARLCC by Dr. Henrietta M. Smith at the first ABASC in 2003. The AARLCC seeks to acquire and preserve papers and other materials from children’s authors, artists and illustrators and will seek donated works appropriate for addition to the collection. The artists’ works are deposited in the archives of the AARLCC and are available to researchers, as well as for exhibitions. These materials will eventually be digitized and made accessible online for study by researchers globally. Other materials will be used for continuing education and program purposes.

The Ashley Bryan Art Series Conference (ABASC) is a continuing education series for librarians, teachers and literacy professionals, and other engaged in the use of children’s literature to improve reading appreciation and skills. The ABASC provides resources for teachers, scholars, writers and artists who want to study the lives and works of authors and illustrators and their creative philosophies. Books written and/or illustrated by persons of African descent are promoted during this conference. Attendees are also introduced to African-centered art forms, including but not limited to, storytelling, music, song, dance and crafts.

In 2005 the ABASC will celebrate the artistry and storytelling of Ashley Bryan and will receive an original work of art from last year’s presenter, Kadir Nelson, 2005 CSK Illustrator Award Winner – “Ellington is Not a Street.”


About Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan is a teller of tales, a singer of songs, and a painter of the world around. He celebrates the lives of Black Americans, Black Africans, and Black West Indians.

Ashley Bryan is the illustrator or author of more than 30 books. Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum, won the Coretta Scott King Award, while Lion and the Ostrich Chicks and Other African Folk Tales, Ashley Bryan’s ABC’s of African American Poetry, and What a Morning! The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals, were all selected Coretta Scott King Honor books. In 1990, Bryan received the Arbuthnot Prize, one of the highest honors in children’s literature.

Bryan was born July 13, 1923, in New York City, and grew up in the Bronx and in Harlem. Bryan became an author at an early age; he wrote his first book, an alphabet primer, at the age of five for his kindergarten classmates.

As a young adult, his interests began to focus exclusively on the visual arts. Bryan attended the Cooper Union School and Columbia University, and he fought during World War II. After the war he won a Fulbright scholarship for overseas study, and traveled in Europe and Africa before settling into a career as a painter and art teacher. Until the mid-1980s, Bryan was a professor of art and visual studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. His early artistic successes led to an offer to illustrate children’s books, and the first ones he did, in the late 1960s, were retellings of folk tales from India and France. When he turned to illustrate African folktales, he was dissatisfied with the way they had been transcribed into English. So he retold them in his own fashion, as well as illustrated them.

Bryan’s first book of African folk tales is The Ox of the Wonderful Horns and Other African Folktales. The woodcuts in the book are bold and expressive. The colors used -red, orange, and black - are familiar colors in traditional African kente cloth. Other African tales include: Turtle Knows Your Name, which is set in the West Indies and The Story of Lightning and Thunder from southern Nigeria. Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum, and The Dancing Granny are also Nigerian tales. Ashley Bryan’s 2004 CSK Award Book, Beautiful Blackbird is a tale from Zambia.

Bryan recommends that stories and poetry be “read aloud, for the reader to understand the relationship between sound, spirit, and meaning,” according to Alice K. Swinger in Language Arts.

Bryan described his approach to painting: “I work with oils on canvas, outdoors, in the spirit of the impressionists. But I don’t work from the essential feeling of light at a specific time; I work from a sense of rhythm.”


About Henrietta M. Smith ED. D.

Henrietta M. Smith is Professor Emerita on the faculty of the School of Library and Information Science, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. Dr. Smith started her career in the public library system of New York City. After moving to Florida, Dr. Smith obtained a position in the Broward County school system, where she served as a school media specialist. During her distinguished career, Dr. Smith became the first African-American to hold a faculty position at the University of South Florida (USF) School of Library and Information Science and also held a faculty position at Florida Atlantic University (FAU).

A prolific author, Dr. Smith has been a contributor to the historical review, Women of Color In Librarianship, edited by Dr. Kathleen de la Pena McCook, as well as publishing articles in the School Library Journal, Book Links, and The Reading Teacher. She has also served as a reviewer for JOYS, Horn Book Guide, and on occasion The Horn Book. Dr. Smith edited the three historical volumes of the Coretta Scott King Task Force, The Coretta Scott King Book Awards: From Vision to Reality (1994) and The Coretta Scott King Book Awards 1970-1999 (1999), both ALA publications. The invitation to write the introduction to the edition of Lift Every Voice and Sing: The Negro Anthem, which gives visual depth to the words and music of the song with dramatic vintage photographs marks Dr. Smith’s most recent publication involvement under the imprint of Jump at the Sun, Hyperion Books for Children, 2000. Dr. Smith presented the third edition of the Coretta Scott King Awards Book, 1970-2004 at the Florida American Library Association Conference June 29, 2004 in Orlando, Florida.


About Eliza Holliday

Eliza Holliday has taught brush lettering and expressive calligraphy and bookmaking workshops in the U.S. and Canada, at the School of Art Chicago, and at ten of the International Calligraphy conferences. She co-authored the instructional book, Brush Lettering and has appeared in many books on art and lettering including the Speedball Textbook 23rd Edition and The Art and Craft of Handlettering. Eliza has had her own business in lettering design for twenty-five years. Her artwork, paintings and books have been show exhibits nationally. Most recently a large format book of Yeat’s poem, A Second Coming, has been purchased for the archives of the Newberry Library in Chicago, Ill.