{"id":1377,"date":"2023-02-28T16:39:26","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T21:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/southsolonmeetinghouse\/?page_id=1377"},"modified":"2023-02-28T16:39:27","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T21:39:27","slug":"ashley-bryan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/southsolonmeetinghouse\/ashley-bryan\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashley Bryan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Ashley Bryan [photo credits: Rose Russo]<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

A master of many artforms and mediums, Ashley Bryan has illustrated children\u2019s books, created drawings, paintings, stained glass, and puppets, written stories and poetry, and more. Born in 1923 in Harlem, New York, from immigrants from the Caribbean island of Antigua, Bryan grew up in the Bronx. From an early age, Bryan displayed his artistic talents by making illustrated books. At the Theodore Roosevelt High School his teachers encouraged him to apply for scholarships to art schools in New York City. Although his impressive portfolio was rejected for a scholarship by a distinguished academy for discriminatory reasons, eventually he was accepted to the Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he was the only Black student at the time. At Cooper Union, he studied sculpture, calligraphy, design, painting, and book illustration. In 1943, he was drafted and joined the segregated 502nd Port Battalion and produced many drawings. In in 1946, he enrolled at Columbia University to study philosophy, \u201cto understand why men make war\u201d (Kane 11:10). That same year, he was offered a scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 1950, he attended the Universit\u00e9 d\u2019Aix-Marseille in Aix-en-Provence, France. Bryan returned to Skowhegan in 1956 when he won the Margaret Blake Fellowship to paint one of the frescoes at the South Solon Meeting House. Later on, he visited Germany and studied at the University of Freiburg. He then taught in several US institutions and joined in 1974 the faculty of Dartmouth College. In 1988, he retired from teaching and moved full-time to his Maine house on the Cranberry Isles. At the time of his passing in 2022, Bryan had published over fifty books for children and received many accolades including the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Children\u2019s Literature Legacy Award, and the New York Public Library\u2019s Library Lions award. In 2013, the Ashley Bryan Center was founded to celebrate his legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Zehra Gundogdu<\/p>\n\n\n\n