It was a little hairy on the water that day in May 2014. The group of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students led by Professor of Geology Dykstra “Dykâ€� Eusden ‘80 had set out in their kayaks from Southwest Harbor, bound for Baker Island via the Gut between Little and Great Cranberry islands.

The goal was to camp on at the Baker Island Lighthouse for five days, from May 7 through May 11, jaunting around to map the volcanics in and around the islands, a typical project for Eusden’s legendary Short Term course, “Geology of the Maine Coast by Sea Kayak.â€�

“But we ran into really challenging southeast winds that forced us to bivvy on Islesford,” aka Little Cranberry, Eusden recalls. Grace Kenney ‘16 remembers it as the “crash landing.â€� A few people sat on the beach to catch their breath after the hard work of getting there.

“We were all relieved,â€� remembers Graham Oxman ’15. Then came the adaptation to being blown off the path they’d planned. Which, in a way, fit right in with the course goals, to teach them not just about geology, but about weather, tides, navigation, group dynamics, and living in situations they’d likely never experienced before. 

In this situation, they needed to figure out an alternative plan for the night. A group, including Eusden and Ian Hillenbrand ’17, set out on a reconnaissance mission. Hillenbrand is from Ohio but had vacationed in Maine with his family, including trips to Little Cranberry because his father, Will Hillenbrand, a children’s book author and illustrator, had an artist friend there. “I said, ‘Hey, I know this guy,’� Hillenbrand remembers. And that was artist, author, and children’s book illustrator Ashley Bryan.

That spring Bryan was 90 years old and had already published many books, including the popular 2011 children’s book Beautiful Blackbird. The local elementary school on Little Cranberry had recently been named for him, but even in his adopted state of Maine he had not yet become quite so widely known as he would in the coming years. (In 2020, Maine Gov. Janet Mills proclaimed his birthday, July 13, “Ashley Frederick Bryan Day” in Maine). “I knew Ashley would probably know everyone, or at least put us in touch with someone we could talk to,â€� said Hillenbrand.

Kenney had never heard of Ashley Bryan, but she was game, even if she was still in a full wetsuit, including the booties. 

“I don’t even think we took those off,â€� Kenney says. But the artist welcomed the damp and disheveled ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ group into his cottage-studio.

“There was like a layer of embarrassment that we were in our wetsuits,� Kenney remembers. She may even still have been wearing the sea kayaking skirt that keeps the inside of the kayak dry in rough waters. “And I remember being really nervous about not knocking things over. It was like being in a toy store, or a museum.�

But Bryan was unphased. After a quick visit, he recommended checking in with the proprietor of the general store. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ group made a plan to return later that day, then walked to the general store, where the woman who ran it extended hospitality as well, offering to let them camp on a point of land looking out to sea. Little Cranberry would be their home for the next four days. 

In all, various members of the group made four trips to Bryan’s studio. In Hillenbrand’s photos, Noel Potter ‘17 has a huge grin on his face. Like most of the students, Potter had never heard of Bryan, but he went along anyway. “Mostly my motivation was just that I didn’t want to miss anything. I wanted to soak in the whole experience.â€�  

Potter wasn’t disappointed. And there was a lot to soak up in Bryan’s home and studio. “Every horizontal surface and most vertical surfaces had something of interest that was probably made by Ashley Bryan, and if not by him, probably made by a friend of his, that were beautiful. And  pretty much every single one had a great story behind it.â€� 

The visits were deeply moving to the students, so much so that this week, as they were wishing a happy birthday via group text to one of the friends they’d made during that Short Term, Jackie Ordemann ’15, it turned into an impromptu memorial for Ashley Bryan, who died Feb. 4. 

For Oxman, who went on to get a master’s in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from Colorado School of Mines, Bryan’s jam-packed studio, an explosion of color and natural materials and projects underway, had a familiar feeling. His grandmother was an artist, and her studio was similarly both overflowing and carefully curated.

“You have tchotchkes everywhere,� Oxman says, items that speak to the artist as both inspiration and maybe, he says, “a reflection of ‘I see myself in this in some way.’�

“It was sort of like we stepped into his brain when we got there,� he adds. “And I got the strong impression that he had just the biggest heart and a childlike excitement to just share it with people.�

Hillenbrand, who completed a master’s degree in geology from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and is now working as a research scientist for the United States Geological Survey, had known Bryan so long he didn’t remember the first time they’d met. Bryan and his father met when Will Hillenbrand was volunteering at a school in Cincinnati and Bryan was a visiting speaker, and Ian remembers that Bryan visited his elementary school. In a sense, he’d just always known Bryan. He was not surprised by the impression the artist left on his classmates during those visits in May 2014. 

Bryan was also deeply curious about what the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students were doing, mapping the bedrock of the island (these students traveled with sketchbooks). The studio was filled with his stained glass made from sea glass he’d collected from nearby shores. This was exactly the kind of immersion in Maine ocean communities Eusden always hoped for in these trips. “I saw so much use of natural materials in Bryan’s art that it really connected to our trip and experiences,â€�  says Eusden, who is retiring this year as the Whitehouse Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences. 

While they visited, Bryan pulled out his marionettes, all handmade from found materials. “His ability to move them, making the characters come alive, was pretty incredible,� Eusden remembers.

“It was almost like conversational play,â€� Kenney says. 

Bryan told them about his own career arc, which had included teaching art at the Dalton School in New York (Oxman, a graduate, was excited by this connection), and about his experiences in World War II. It was eye opening for the group. “None of us have ever been drafted,â€� Oxman says. “I was sort of self-absorbed at that time in my life, but halfway through I remember thinking, ‘This man was trying to get into art school at a time when segregation was not that far in the rear view.’â€� 

Those visits felt all the more precious this week. Potter reflected on how he fell hard for Maine island communities on that trip, with their sense of joyous eccentricity and welcome, as embodied by Bryan, and feels fortunate to regularly encounter it through his work with Portland-based Rippleffect. At the outdoors youth program he leads sea kayaking trips, among other skills building adventures.

Kenney, who teaches at Slate School in North Haven, Conn., an environmentally-oriented elementary school, reflected on how it continued to resonate with her. For Christmas, she gave her mother a book of photographs of Bryan’s marionettes. And last year, after Kenney told the school librarian at Slate about how incredible it was to meet him, they added some of Bryan’s books to our school library. “It made me think about how that is one of the wonderful ways in which he can and will be remembered.�

After learning about the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art’s exhibition, Let’s Celebrate Ashley Bryan! in late 2020, Kenney was inspired to write to Bryan to thank him for his hospitality. The whole experience had been so meaningful, she said, and she wanted him to know. She didn’t know quite how to reach him (he was living with a niece in Texas during the pandemic) so she sent a letter to the Ashley Bryan Center. She was well aware that the man she’d met when she was a sophomore at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was well into his 90s. “I remember telling myself, ‘You have to do this now, because who knows? You will be so angry with yourself if you miss this opportunity.’â€�

For Museum of Art director Daniel Mills, the story of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Short Term encounter with Bryan fits exactly with the man he knew. “I’m not surprised to hear this. Ashley was such a wonderful man, a bright light and generous soul who had such an impact on the many people he met.â€� The two spoke frequently during the development of the 2020–2021 Let’s Celebrate Ashley Bryan! exhibition in the museum. “Each call ended with an outpouring of Ashley’s love for me and the museum staff, and for the students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€�

As the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art was opening its new exhibit Let’s Celebrate Ashley Bryan! featuring a recent gift of more than 50 works by the Maine artist, author, and illustrator, a crowd from all over the country gathered on Zoom for a lecture.

The invited speaker was renowned poet Yolande Cornelia “Nikkiâ€� Giovanni Jr., a friend and collaborator of Ashley Bryan’s, but what she delivered was a surprise, more joyful life lessons than a lecture.

That surprise was heightened when Bryan joined the conversation from Houston, where he has been sheltering from the pandemic with his niece and her family. The duo talked about many subjects, including painting, poetry, the nature and sources of creativity, and ways to find hope.

Amid the tumult of recent weeks, we found comfort in listening to the conversation between these two old friends, who between them have had 174 years to acquire their wisdom (Bryan is 97, Giovanni is 77).

We distilled a few exchanges between the artist and his beloved friend (watch thehere and take a ). One of the best pieces of advice we carried away: Bryan urging us to be restored every day by the sight and company of what and who we love. “We keep each other going, either by presence or by thought,â€� he says. 

1. ‘Say thank you for the inspiration’

Bryan has written and illustrated dozens of children’s books. He grew up in the Bronx, where he produced his first “book” in kindergarten with the encouragement of his teacher and his parents (his father was a printer, and supplied him with leftover paper to draw and paint on).

He has been making art ever since, although at the time of the lecture, he was impatiently waiting for a broken wrist to heal so he could get back to work. Here’s why:

Bryan: “I am trying to match the good and creativeness that is given to the world, in everything I do, to say thank you for the inspiration of all that has been created in the world.“

2. Any poem can be yours, so sing it your way

Giovanni read one of her poems and one of Bryan’s and both artists spoke of the importance of reading aloud as a vehicle to claiming poetry for yourself.

Ashley: I tell children, you must work to find your voice in the printed word of the poem. Then the poem is yours.

Giovanni: We have to remember poems are like songs. And every time we sing them we sing them differently. Somebody’s in a good mood, we’re singing it, really ‘ta da ta da.’ And then sometimes, in a different mood, we sing it a little slower. And It’s the same song but we handle it differently every time. 

Bryan: It’s never the same twice. 

3. When all else is gone, your voice is what matters

An audience member asked Bryan about the importance of one’s “prophetic voice.” It’s all you have, he said.

Bryan: You have nothing that’s more important than your prophetic voice, because everything is all dead and gone and used…but what you’re projecting, what you’re seeing and really, in a sense, religiously opening up again, is at the heart of everything.

Because when they say, ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was God,’ and everything’s come from that beginning…I mean, what more poetic and mysterious can be stated? 

4. Find inspiration from the ‘magic and mystery in every moment’

Both poet and painter spoke about how they find inspiration. It could be in a word that sounds different from the way it looks. It could be a jar of peculiar pickles in the refrigerator, or looking around a room at the clothing and postures of the ones you’re with.

Bryan: We go along every day by day with what comes up as the challenge of the day but there is always a magic and mystery in every moment. Even now, speaking with you, it’s all such a wonder. I say, ‘I can’t get over the magic and wonder of the letter D in the word ‘Wednesday.’ To me, the big D, I’m already at the heart of the mystery of language, to make a poem. The magic and mystery of the letter D in the word Wednesday!

Giovanni: I have a poem…”Prickled Pickles, Don’t Smile.” And I don’t even like prickled pickles. So I’m laughing at, because I used to like pickles and I don’t know what happened to me and pickles, but we fell out, but you’re always taking some little thing that you liked and you’re putting it together and saying, well, what can it do? Or what, what is it saying to me?

And you have to listen…I think that painters see but poets have to listen. And we listen to the little things that we pick up no matter what it is.

Bryan: And when you see there, all sorts of things that happen, that surprise you, that may be quite evident, right? They’re sitting in a room with others and you notice how the color of one’s dress and the other’s suit, what they do in opposition to each other — or in conformity with each other — you’re always recreating your experience.

You know, however, it may seem to be set, you are then recreating that moment, that scene, you know, and that’s what makes it so exciting. No matter where you go, you know, you’re going to have that adventurous challenge.

5. As a writer, ‘you are your first reader’

Among the works of art Bryan makes are sculptural puppets, using found objects, particularly from the shores of Little Cranberry Island, where he lives and Giovanni has visited him in the past, observing him at work. “You make such beautiful things out of, for lack of a better word, nothing,” she said. Giovanni described these puppets as “friendly,” prompting an audience member to ask how Giovanni manages to pull off a similar kind of friendliness in her poetry.

Giovanni: I think that people forget you’re writing for yourself. And I say that all the time to my students: “You are your first reader.” So that as you read it, it has to please you. It has to make you smile. You are your first audience and you have to pay attention to yourself. That’s what’s important. Pay attention to yourself.

6. Bring your creativity alive: ‘You have to make this work’

Bryan, who is known for his theatrical performances of his own books, chimed in to point out the importance of staying humble and present in putting art out into the world. The work shouldn’t stop when a painting is on a wall or a new children’s book is on a bookstore’s shelves.

Bryan: The more we bring attention to and put some of the effort to the person [the artist], then they think it is all out there — to be given and done for them. And then you remind them, you are the one who has to bring this alive. So you have to make it work.

7. Stay hopeful: ‘Go forward with our hope for human beings’

A question from an audience member about what writers and artists bring to a community prompted Giovanni to talk about the role of being (and staying) hopeful in her work, and life.

Giovanni: Somebody asked me recently, ‘Why do you hope?’ Well, if you don’t hope, what else do you have? What else are you going to try to do? If you don’t have hope, then there’s no reason to continue. I will hope. It’s what human beings should do. 

What we do is we go forward because everything else was yesterday. And there’s nothing wrong with yesterday. You learn, or you hopefully, learn from yesterday. You do go forward, and in going forward, we go forward with our dreams.

We go forward with our hope for human beings. We embrace tomorrow. And I think that’s what we should do. Not be afraid. Most people who are afraid, most people who are cowardly, they are afraid of tomorrow. They’re not afraid of yesterday. They’re afraid of tomorrow.

Renowned poet Yolande Cornelia “Nikki� Giovanni Jr. touched her heart with her hand and contemplated the limitations of poetry in comparison to the medium of painting, particularly as practiced by her friend and collaborator, the artist and author Ashley Bryan. “Poets have words,� she said. “And that’s really all we have.�

Giovanni, an activist and educator who came to fame in the 1960s and was often described as the “Poet of the Black Revolution,� was speaking Thursday evening at an opening week Zoom lecture attended by about 200 fans of both the poet and the painter.

A resident of Maine’s Little Cranberry Island, about a mile off the Down East coast, Bryan is the subject of a new show at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, Let’s Celebrate Ashley Bryan! inspired by a gift of more than 50 works from collectors Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs.

Video by Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College

Just before the lecture started, Giovanni had seen a bee in her garden while watering. Looking at it, she mused about the coming night and the need for rain.

She felt the bareness of the words she might put down about the sweet bee and the flowers, about all these living things and how they worked together, compared to the richness of the art Bryan could create of the scene before her. He illustrated her poetry books for children, The Sun is So Quiet and I am Loved, in addition to many of his own.

“It’s going to be the painters who are going to paint and show us that,� said Giovanni, who is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. “And I think, we’re just lucky to have painters like Ashley, who embrace this world that we live in. Who find the wonderful colors, who find the love and joy in what we live in.�

When she first met Bryan, she’d been “amazed� to find that “he actually had read my work. You never think of someone as great as Ashley Bryan reading your work.�

Then Bryan made a welcome guest appearance, calling in to the Zoom talk from Houston, where he has been staying with his niece Vanessa and her family.

What had been a discussion of poetry evolved into an outpouring of affection and a party-like atmosphere, buoyed by Bryan’s resounding hopefulness. “There is magic and mystery in every moment,� he said. “Even now.� (He made the guests laugh by riffing on the magic of the silent “D� in the word “Wednesday.�)

Longtime ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ dean James Reese was there, smiling as Giovanni read poems aloud. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Professor Myron Beasley was sending greetings through chat. There were uncommonly insightful words being delivered by both Giovanni and Bryan. There was even a chance for the Isaacs, who have been Bryan’s friends and neighbors on Little Cranberry for decades, to speak about their gift.

Henry Isaacs praised the museum staff, including Mills, education curator Anthony Shostak, curator Bill Low, registrar Corie Audette and Caitlin Patton, the museum’s fellow. “They get it,� Isaacs said. “They really get it. That place has a heart bigger than the Ritz.�

The Museum of Art is opening the Bryan show in a difficult time. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the campus is closed to the general public. Only students, faculty and staff can visit in person, although the museum staff is working on innovative ways to create engagement and outreach, including the Ashley Bryan Story Time Challenge, which invites the public to share videos of themselves reading from his books. (Maine Gov. Janet Mills has already taken that challenge).

Giovanni’s talk is expected to reach audiences worldwide, both through the live Zoom on the evening of Oct. 22, and a recording of it, will be available soon on the museum’s website.

Museum director Dan Mills said he and the staff had briefly considered delaying the show, but they felt an urgency to share these works now and to fill the museum space with the lushness of Bryan’s colorful work. The new collection includes paintings, linocuts, drawings, ephemera and original artwork from some of the celebrated author/illustrator’s many award-winning books as well as copies of many vintage books he contributed to.

“I would describe the mood of these paintings as really, just love,� says Corie Audette, assistant collections manager and registrar. “He really brings that warmth to his pieces and to me whenever I look at them.�

The crew worked at “lightning speed� to pull it off, Mills said, coordinating the gift from the Isaacs, processing it, restoring a painting from the 1950s and developing educational programming to make the show come alive for those off campus.

Bryan is 97. He first came to Maine in 1946, after his service in World War II and his education at Cooper Union, to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, in what was the famed school’s inaugural year.

Although he moved to Maine and Little Cranberry Island year-round after retiring as professor emeritus of art at Dartmouth College in 1988, Bryan often stays with his niece in Texas during the winter, and this year, travel and health considerations kept him there. Earlier this summer, he survived COVID-19 (“the virus fell in love with him and kissed him,� Giovanni said, making poetry out of pain). Last week, Bryan broke his wrist. But definitely not his spirit.

“I have to get this hand back, so I can really work.�

As for the Isaacs’ gift to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Bryan said he was happy his work had found a new home, after years on his friends’ walls. “It is nice to know it will be there,â€� he said.

The exhibit will be up through March 20, 2021.