The Annual Ashley Bryan Lecture

 The Jesup Memorial Library is establishing an annual lecture celebrating the life and ideals of Ashley Bryan.  A noted printmaker, author especially of children’s books, puppet maker, painter, story teller, illustrator, and maker of art from sea glass and other found materials, Bryan devoted his life in the arts to bringing people together. The Library  will invite a distinguished artist or critic whose work reflects similarly deep interest in racial equity to discuss that work with the Downeast Maine community each year for a mid-summer presentation.

2023 —Keith Morris Washington “Marks of a Native Son” —Thursday, July 13 at 6:30 p.m. See a Recording Here

The art of Keith Morris Washington investigates meaning and metaphor through landscape and portraiture. These landscapes and full-body portraits explore memory, identity and social themes, that are latent and often obscured by visible features, cultural (mis)understanding and time.

2022—Nikki Giovanni “Grits, Grace and Glow”—See a Recording Here

Giovanni has received numerous awards, including the inaugural Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, the American Book Award, the Langston Hughes Award, the Virginia Governor’s Award for the Arts, and the Emily Couric Leadership Award. Her album, “The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection,” was a Grammy finalist for the Best Spoken Word Album and her autobiography, “Gemini,” was a finalist for the 1973 National Book Award. In addition she writes, “I am very proud to have authored 3 New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestsellers, highly unusual for a poet.” She has won an unprecedented seven NAACP Image Awads. She is currently University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since 1987.

2021—Daniel Minter “Keys, Deciphering US”—See a Recording Here

Minter is a painter, sculptor, and assemblage artist exploring common echoes in the visual languages of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. Through his personal history and through his study of the cultural and religious creations of people of African descent, Minter has developed an iconography of Black futurity grounded in the narratives, traditions, and ethics of the US South but connected as well to Brazil, the Caribbean and the African continent by means of his imaginative sensibilities. In 2019, Minter co-founded Indigo Arts Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of people of African descent. Minter is graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from The Maine College of Art.