Block Prints by Ashley Bryan (1923-2022)

The Mariposa community lost a cherished friend and mentor in February when beloved artist, poet, and children's book author Ashley Bryan passed away. He was 98. Born in 1923 and raised in the Bronx, Ashley discovered art at a young age and never stopped creating. Throughout his life he stressed the importance of staying creative, loving one's self, and never forgetting "the child within."

Ashley lived out this advice, attending Cooper Union School of Art and, after WWII, studying philosophy and literature at Columbia University, the University of Marseille, and Freiburg University. As a black soldier in the segregated army during two tours in WWII, Ashley sketched what he saw and experienced, creating a moving record of the black soldiers' experience in this period of history. Some of these sketches and experiences are shared in his award-winning 2019 picture book memoir, Infinite Hope, available in the Mariposa gift shop.

Ashley authored over 50 children's books most of which shared African and Caribbean folklore (his parents emigrated from Antigua), Black American Spirituals, and themes of inclusion, kindness, and self-acceptance. His 2016 book Freedom Over Me, imagining the lives and dreams of 11 slaves whose names and price he saw listed in an 1828 estate document, was a Newbery Honor Book, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Book.

Ashley also created exuberantly colorful paintings and extraordinary sea glass windows and puppets from objects he found on the shores of his long-time home on Maine's Little Cranberry Island. His exquisite block prints of Black American Spirituals (for sale below in a signed and numbered special edition) were his tribute to the unacknowledged genius of enslaved people whose creativity has shaped American cultural and spiritual life.

Proceeds from print sales benefit the Mariposa Museum and the Ashley Bryan Storyteller Pavillion at Ashley's home in Islesford, ME. Additional prints are available from the Ashley Bryan Center (ashleybryancenter.org)

We were honored by the friendship of this loving and deeply wise man and are grateful for the Mariposa's ongoing collaboration with the Ashley Bryan Center, working to share Ashley's life and legacy with the world.