Artist and illustrator Ashley Bryan has accumulated many “firsts” during his long life as an African American creative. A Bronx native, WWII veteran (D-Day), a graduate of both The Cooper Union and Columbia University, a professor at Dartmouth College, a re-teller of folktales and spirituals, an author and studio artist, and winner of many prestigious annual and lifetime achievement awards, Bryan has always advocated for the arts’ power to fight against division and for universal relationships based in aesthetic responses. You can find a good introduction to his biography here.

Reviewing Bryan’s body of work reminded me of the unfortunate biases and assumptions each of us carry for representations and images of Jesus Christ. My church fellowship has favored representations by Warner Sallman and Richard Francis Hook. Most people would agree that neither type is historically accurate, but both types demonstrate the lasting imprint an iconic image can have on the concept we hold on to, in spite of evidence to the contrary. If white people are not comfortable with the image of a black Jesus, their judgment is usually compromised by their willingness to assert their own version of a mostly-white Jesus. Below is Bryan’s image of Mary and Joseph being welcomed to the stable by a boy, from Who Built the Stable? A Nativity Poem, 2012