Mary Azarian, the 1999 Caldecott Award winner, has three passions--her art, gardening, and playing tournament bridge. She has been creating art with woodcuts for 30 years and in 1999 earned the most coveted award in the field of children's books when she received the Caldecott Award for her illustrations in Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin.

Azarian's interest in making woodcuts started when she was a child on her grandfather's small farm in Virginia. The artist says she spent "a wonderful childhood" exploring the woods and countryside on her pony. She lived just 15 miles, by dirt road, from the heart of Washington; the nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away. In the 1960s, after studying the printing process and painting in college, she and her husband Tom moved to Vermont.

Vermont at that time had more cows than people. Azarian was hired to teach in a poor rural K-8 school with "just a few reading and math texts and an old set of encyclopedias." Azarian says, "I had no education courses, so by necessity, education became a collaborative effort." Her artistic talent came into play when she created a set of alphabet posters. Before the birth of her second son, Azarian quit teaching and established Farmhouse Press. By the '70s, she had obtained an arts grant to create a painted set of alphabet cards for every primary classroom in the state of Vermont.

But when she made the rounds of the publishing houses with her artwork, she was given the impression that "woodcuts were hopelessly `passe.'" She continued free-lancing, and her woodcuts appeared in catalogues and on product labels, brochures, and pamphlets. They were also sold at art galleries in the area.

A year later a publisher called; her alphabet cards became the basis for The Farmer's Alphabet, a large-format book printed in black and white with contrasting red letters. The woodcuts reflected rural life on a Vermont farm--with, of course, a cow. In 1984, The Man Who Lived Alone, set in the New England woods, provided a showcase for Azarian's sturdy woodcuts. Two years later, she illustrated A Symphony for the Sheep in which C. M. Millen explains in poetic text the process of making a wool garment. Azarian's hand-colored woodcuts, full of rich and earthy good humor, were a perfect match.

In 1998, Azarian's illustrations were published in three books. Her own cat, Big Kitty, was the model for Barn Cat, a rhyming country verse that followed a charming cat through his day. The other two books had a common element: Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley. Bentley was a financial contributor to the Fresh-Air Fund. He lived near Jericho, Vermont, where families often hosted New York tenement children who were sent by the fund to experience country life. In Faraway Summer, Johanna Hurwitz tells the story of a poor Jewish orphan who was able to leave her crowded New York tenement for a country vacation where she meets and becomes friends with Bentley.

It was while Azarian was working on the small black and white woodcuts for Hurwitz's novel that she received the manuscript for Jacqueline Briggs Martin's picture book biography, Snowflake Bentley. The fact that both books included Bentley as a character is, according to Azarian, "absolutely coincidental" and "both strange and wonderful." Of the Martin manuscript for Snowflake Bentley, Azarian says that when she read the "simple and eloquent" manuscript, she was "excited about illustrating the book." After accepting the contract to illustrate Snowflake Bentley, Azarian discussed the book's design with the editor. They decided to use sidebars for the author's additional information about events in the narrative.

Azarian lives about an hour from Bentley's home, so her research for the illustrations included an October day spent in an unheated Jericho, Vermont, museum. Following the visit, Azarian says she used the approach that she often uses when she is illustrating: "Get out of the way and let things happen."

She rarely does detailed sketches, preferring instead to draw directly onto the wood block. She draws the picture onto a block of wood in pencil and then draws over the picture with a waterproof felt-tipped pen. The next stage involves carefully cutting away the part of the image she does not want to print. Once that is done, she rolls ink over the design and lays the inked block on the bottom of her hand-operated press. Once the block is in the press, she puts paper on top of the block and rolls a weighted cylinder over the block. The prints are hand-colored.

Azarian's favorite color, blue, became the background color for the Snowflake Bentley book jacket featuring Azarian's spectacular woodcut of Bentley bent over the vintage camera that he used all of his life to photograph snowflakes. The illustrations that illuminate the text show Bentley at his lifelong pursuit, photographing nature and snowflakes. Of the illustrations, the chairperson of the 1999 Caldecott Committee said, "The woodcuts were accented with carefully rendered watercolors. The images in the sidebars never detract from the text and the two-page spreads." These illustrations earned Azarian the coveted Caldecott Award.

She was notified of the award early on February 1, 1999. The day before, Vermont had had rain, sleet, solid ice, and glorious snow. Azarian and a friend had gone to a concert and later in the evening decided not to watch the Superbowl but instead go for a midnight ski. The next morning, the artist was enjoying a cup of tea by the fire when she was called outside to help with a friend's car that was stuck in the snow. When she returned to the house, the phone was ringing. She remembers thinking as she rushed to answer it that it was "insensitive" for someone to call so early. (It was not yet 8 o'clock.) Her first reaction to the news that she was the Caldecott winner was that "such a joke was in poor taste."

She was just getting used to the idea that it might not be a joke when one of her sons told her, "Don't get too excited, Mom. They will probably call back and tell you they miscounted."

Snowflake Bentley is a beautiful example of Azarian's work. She has, like Wilson A. "Snowflake" Bentley, persisted at earning a living at something that may not be the most practical but "satisfies the needs of the heart."

Azarian has been "a fairly fanatic gardener for over 30 years." She has a flower and vegetable garden. Both, she says, "are far too large and therefore somewhat neglected." Her fascination with alphabets and her love of gardening have come together with her artwork to form her next project, a gardening alphabet to be released by Houghton Mifflin in the year 2000.

Her woodcuts and the projects she has been involved in over the past 35 years give clues to her own favorites: cooking from scratch, the color blue, playing bridge, gardening, the art of Chris Van Allsburg, and medieval and Renaissance choral music. She enjoys reading in the hour between her morning walk and when she begins work. Each morning, as early as possible, she is in her studio. On a "good day" she is done by two o'clock p.m.; she seldom if ever works beyond four. But since she can structure her time as she pleases, she might take time off from her art to work an entire day in her garden. Seven days a week, she is at work--in either her studio or her garden.

Even after three decades as an artist, she still finds that she approaches each new art project with a slight misgiving that "I won't get it right." But she is learning to ignore her doubts and have confidence that once she starts the project, whatever it is, it will probably go well. To maintain her creativity, she often paints experimentally, not commercially, so that she has to please only herself. She also enjoys working with fabric design, mainly painting on silk.

Mary Azarian has three grown sons--Ethan, Jesse, and Tim--all musicians or artists. A full-time printmaker, she has been selling woodcut prints and paintings since 1969. She spends most of her time on production prints, illustrating usually one book a year. With her beagle, Hilda, and three cats, Phoebe, Trey, and Big Kitty, she continues to make her home in Vermont and create art in her Farmhouse Press studio.

Hall, Donald. The Man Who Lived Alone. D.R. Godine, 1984; 1998 pb.

Hurwitz, Johanna. Faraway Summer. William Morrow, 1998.

Martin, Jacqueline Briggs. Snowflake Bentley. Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Millen, C. M. A Symphony for the Sheep. Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Saul, Carol P. Barn Cat. Little, Brown, 1998.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Copyright 1998 by Houghton Mifflin Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Houghton Mifflin.

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By Sharron L. McElmeel

Sharron L. McElmeel often writes about authors and illustrators and their books. Two recent titles include: 100 Most Popular Children's Authors (Libraries Unlimited, 1999) and 100 Most Popular Picture Book Authors and Illustrators (Libraries Unlimited, 2000).

©2005 Sharron L. McElmeel

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