Hughes, Langston

Using his mother's sewing scissors, reproduced on the endpapers as adornments to sailing ships, Ashley Bryan crafts vivid paper collages to illustrate a selection of water-related poetry by Langston Hughes. Bryan seems to draw on Henri Matisse as inspiration, in technique, color, line, and shape. From the curvaceous forms of waves and seaweed to the visible marks and seams of the paper cuttings, the echoes are clear. Bryan's construction-paper palette—a rainbow of pastels, jewel tones, browns, and grays