Hindsight

My wife and I recently returned from our annual trip to Maine. Sadly this year the occasion was the memorial ceremony for our dear friend and artistic genius Ashley Bryan, who passed away at the age of 98. To say he was beloved on the tiny island of Islesford (aka Little Cranberry Island), and throughout the book industry, is a huge understatement, and to us he was family. We absolutely had to be at this memorial, even though there were significant logistical hurdles.

We drove up with stops in Delaware, Boston, Portland, and at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, which has a lovely exhibit of Ashley’s work (alongside the Wyeths, Leonard Baskin, and other important American artists).

Then we met up with a crew of amazing authors with whom we shared a house on Great Cranberry Island (just a short hop from Islesford and the closest accommodations we were able to find). Linda Sue Park, Renee Watson, and Vaunda Michaux Nelson. We were later joined by Ashley’s wonderful editor Caitlyn Dlouhy.

Sketches of the boat rides, the islands, and the ceremony (more on that below):

The ceremony was absolutely beautiful. We all wore pins we’d made from a “Beautiful Blackbird” craft station at the Farnsworth (Alison’s great idea!) After the ceremony there was a reception with two amazing cakes, plus a slideshow and a show of Ashley’s paintings in the local gallery, and then his family went out in a parade of boats to scatter his ashes.

We felt truly blessed to celebrate him with so many of his friends and family and even more so to have known him and spent so much time with him over the years (every year since 2007). Thank you Ashley, and thank you, Islesford. We love you.

If you want to see more of my Maine paintings, click here.

I did a lot of sketching at events last weekend.

Thursday – Politics & Prose hosted two incredible writers of short stories, Karen Russell and Ted Chiang, moderated by Everdeen Mason.

Friday – Hyattsville started its Summer Jam series with live music by The Roustabouts (including my neighbor Pete Daniels on fiddle.)

Saturday – Gaithersburg Book Festival was excellent as always. I did a panel first thing in the morning with Megan Whalen Turner, and then stuck around and sketched some of the other cartoonists (Alex Graudins, Andy Hirsch, Dave Roman, Michael Cavna, and Malaka Gharib).

On Tuesday I returned from a fantastic trip to Maine (where I attended and helped teach the Islesford Painting Workshop). I will post lots of art, photos and thoughts from that experience soon, but in the meantime, here’s the other thing I did Tuesday: went to a great author event at Politics and Prose with Jonathan Stroud (Bartimaeus, Lockwood & Co.) and Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl, WARP). Jonathan charmed and Eoin cracked up the large audience crowded into P&P’s kids department. Here’s a page of sketches of the scene.