It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw
It Jes’ Happened is a biography of outsider artist Bill Traylor, a former slave who at the age of 83 began to draw pictures based on his memories and observations of rural and urban life.
As an enslaved boy on an Alabama farm in the early 1860s, Bill Traylor worked in the hot cotton fields. After slavery ended, Bill’s family stayed on the land as sharecroppers.
By the time he was 79, Bill was all alone in the world. Lonely, poor and eventually homeless, he wandered the downtown streets of Montgomery, Alabama. But deep within himself Bill had a reservoir of memories of his lifetime spent on the land. When he was 83 years old, these memories blossomed into pictures. Bill began to draw people and places from his earlier life, as well as scenes from the busy city around him. Today, Bill Traylor is considered one of the most important American self-taught artists.
Click here to download the It Jes’ Happened Teacher Activity Guide written by educator Debbie Gonzales.
REVIEWS
“Tate crafts prose that is clear and specific, the lively text sometimes surrounded by playful figures cavorting off the pages as Traylor draws them. An important picture-book biography that lovingly introduces this “outsider” artist to a new generation.” -Kirkus
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“In understated prose, Tate imagines the wellspring of memories that might have contributed to Traylor’s outpouring of art so late in life . . . in this thoughtful reflection on the nature of creative inspiration and a man who “has come to be regarded as one of the most important self-taught American folk artists.”
-Publisher’s Weekly
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Christie’s own flat primitive style is a perfect match for Traylor’s story . . . But the real artistry here is in Don Tate’s finely crafted account of Traylor’s first eighty years; the ordinary events in the life of an ordinary African American man are made notable by Tate’s repetition of the line: “Bill saved up memories of these times deep inside.” When these memories later burst into art, they are made all the more meaningful.”
-The Horn Book
