Adjoa Burrowes
Adjoa Burrowes was interviewed for BookCast by Fairfax County Public Library Director Sam Clay.
She will be at the 2008 African-American Read-In at 3 p.m. February 3 at the Sherwood Regional Library.
Burrowes has illustrated 17 books, as well as puzzles, posters and greeting cards using her signature cut-paper collage technique.
Her latest book, Grandma’s Purple Flowers, which she both wrote and illustrated, was an American Booksellers Association (ABA) Kids Pick of the List winner, a Bank Street College Kids Book of the Year selection and a first-place winner of the 2001 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.
Burrowes conducts art and writing workshops for children and adults nationally, including Getting Published workshops at Smithsonian’s Anacostia Museum for African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts – Arts, Books and Communities program in Washington, D.C.
“I live in color; I live for color,” Burrowes said in a 2004 interview in the Herndon Observer. She is known for her cut-paper collage technique of illustration which intensifies the color in her illustrations. The collages begin as outlines traced on a piece of paper, a hard copy of what she imagines the page will look like. She then paints other pieces of paper in varying colors and designs, which she later cuts out and affixes to the outline to create a three-dimensional picture.
Visit her Web site.