Carole Marie Byard was an American visual artist, illustrator, and photographer.
24 Facts About Carole Byard
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Carole Byard was an award-winning illustrator of children's books, and the recipient of a Caldecott Honor, as well as multiple Coretta Scott King Awards.
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Carole Byard had one sibling, an older brother, Michael Byard, who among other jobs, was a passionate gardener.
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In 1943, Carole Byard's mother died when she was very young, and her large extended family became very important to her.
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Carole Byard was raised by her father and grandmother after her mother's death.
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Carole Byard's father took over the role as head of the family when Byard's grandfather died.
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Carole Byard attended New Jersey Avenue School, then Central Junior High and then graduated from Atlantic City High School.
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Carole Byard got a four-year scholarship to an art school in Ohio, but couldn't afford to go due to the death of someone close to her and her father becoming ill with cancer.
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Carole Byard instead began working as a simulation pilot at the National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center near Atlantic City.
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Carole Byard used this job to support herself while studying at Fleischer Art Memorial in Philadelphia from 1961 until 1963.
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From 1964 to 1968, Carole Byard attended New York Phoenix School of Design at 33rd and Lexington, where she majored in illustration, and where she would later go on to teach.
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Carole Byard said that as she was growing up she was passionate about reading, and loved books, but always felt that there were no books or images of people that looked like her, her family, and extended family, and how they lived as people.
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In 1969 or 1970, Carole Byard moved from Harlem into the Westbeth Artists Community two years after graduating from college.
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At Westbeth, there was a Black Artists Guild that Carole Byard said was formative.
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Carole Byard went to see a production of Slave Ship, a play written by Amiri Baraka produced at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
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Carole Byard was inspired by a character in the play and did a large painting based on the play.
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Carole Byard joined the group and participated in writing and making art.
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Carole Byard returned to Nigeria as a delegate to the second Black and African Festival of Art and Culture in Lagos in 1977.
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Carole Byard went on to illustrate more than 16 children's books over the course of her career.
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Carole Byard was concerned with increasing the representation of people of color in American children's books, and her illustrations reflect that interest in centering Black stories.
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Carole Byard was a contributing artist for the children's anthology Jump Back, Honey: The Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, which featured artwork by Jerry Pinkney and Faith Ringgold.
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Carole Byard had a lifelong fine-art practice in painting, sculpture, installation and mixed-media art.
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Carole Byard was a participant in the 1998 Smithsonian exhibit Resonant Forms: Contemporary African American Women Sculptors, curated by Deborah Willis.
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The New York Public Library exhibited a collection of Carole Byard's art known as the Rent Series in 2015.