The Hickory Public Library is going on a field trip to HMA!

The marriage of image to text is as complex as it is harmonious. Join author and artist, Frank Morrison, the 2023 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award recipient and this year’s Summer Learning Program’s featured artist as he teaches us the path of picture book creation.

Frank Morrison (b. 1971) started his journey as a graffiti artist in New Jersey, tagging walls with spray paint. However, the opportunity to tour with music artist Sybil as a breakdancer, an influential high school art teacher, and a visit to the Louvre Museum in Paris opened him up to new artistic and creative avenues. Early indoctrination into hip-hop culture can be seen through Morrison’s work, which has been dubbed a mash-up of urban mannerism, graffiti, and abstract contemporary, and reflects deeply on the loss of human stories from past eras.

Morrison is the illustrator of over 20 children’s books, including the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winners Standing in the Need of Prayer and R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award winner Jazzy Miz Mozetta, and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor books, Little Melba and her Big Trombone and Let the Children March. Frank was a Society of Illustrators’ Original Art Silver Medal Honoree two years in a row, for The Roots of Rap and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. His debut author-illustrated picture book is Kick Push.

His work has been featured at Art Basel, Scope Miami, and Red Dot art fairs, and shown at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Mason Fine Art Gallery in Atlanta, GA.

Admission is free!

Learn more about Frank at www.morrisongraphics.com.