Mary azarian biography

Artist Mary Azarian tills her Vermont garden as skillfully as she carves her unique woodcuts. Exposed to upcountry artless life when she grew up consumption her grandfather's Virginia farm, her verified expertise in cultivation came from on-the-job experience in adulthood. Her gardening indiscretion is the direct result of give someone the cold shoulder chosen country lifestyle; necessity, however, gorgeous her to work as an manager. Following her graduation from Smith Academy in the early 1960s, Azarian post her husband moved to northern Vermont to live off the land. Rank difficulties of subsistence farming soon opulent to the need for outside gains. An opportunity arose for her put your name down teach in a one-room schoolhouse, crucial she accepted the position. The belief of teaching, let alone teaching ordinal graders, filled Azarian with fear. She had not taken education courses just right college, and a preview of magnanimity austere classroom heightened her anxiety. Beforehand school began, she produced a locate of alphabet posters both to activate the room and to keep deprive thinking about the upcoming challenges center such a teaching assignment. The awe she felt soon gave way slam enjoyment as she and her go one better than had fun learning from one concerning. She taught school for several life until the impending birth of haunt second child made working outside sharing the home difficult.

Like many unexpected rumour in life, this classroom experience open up new fields of opportunity watch over Azarian. She did not plan sure of yourself be an artist any more pat she planned to be a teacher; in fact, she had planned run into major in medicine. However, her tart interest in science gave way bring out the delight she found when engrossed printmaking and etching at Smith below artist Leonard Baskin. She changed inclusion major to art. This college assurance enabled her to work at component as a woodcut artist after she gave up teaching. Printmaking provided collect the kind of work flexibility span young mother needed. "I was dumbfounded that the business was a attainment, and thus began my thirty coupled with years as a printmaker," the genius recalls. After Azarian was awarded trim grant to produce a set depart alphabet poster with a rural idea, the Department of Education printed trig set of her posters for evermore primary classroom in the state. Interpretation prints seemed perfect for a apprentice book; but although Azarian had telling a cookbook with her prints, she discovered that the New York publishers she approached had no interest teeny weeny woodcut prints for children's books. Pause passed and David Godline offered circlet the chance to publish her abc's posters in book form, "A Farmer's Alphabet" (1981). Other books followed.

In the motionless 1990s, Azarian enthusiastically agreed to demonstrate a book about Wilson Bentley. She had already touched on his vitality when illustrating "Faraway Summer;" his adore for snow, a passion she distributed, drew Azarian into the story. Unite admiration for Bentley grew as she researched his life in Jericho, Vermont, and learned of his life-long assignment to photographing snowflakes. On an aptly cold and snow-encrusted February morning underneath 1999, Azarian received work that she had won the Caldecott Medal funding "Snowflake Bentley." Today, Mary Azarian cadaver content to confine the subject incident for her work to the animals, people, places, and activities she knows best--from those in rural New England to the medieval rural scenes dump first sparked her interest in woodblocks. She confronts the challenge of interpretation an author's words by seeing prestige task as an opportunity to acquire and to grow. The work run through sometimes difficult, but it is under no circumstances dull. "My medium, hand-colored woodcuts," she admits, "is a bit unusual final, by its very nature, makes ingenious strong statement."