Jan Spivey Gilchrist was born February 15, 1949, in Chicago, Illinois, to Charles and Arthric Spivey.[1] Gilchrist first began drawing as a young girl when she suffered from a debilitating bone disease, which prevented her from physical activities.[1] Charles Spivey, a minister, encouraged his daughter's love of art at a young age and together, they would travel from their South Side neighborhood to visit the Art Institute of Chicago.[1] Once there, Gilchrist longed to see art created by and featuring African Americans.[1] Young Gilchrist was devastated by the lack of such a section.[1] Looking back, she recounts "So I decided to change everything. I was going to make sure that African Americans were in paintings and books."[1] With her passion for art and practical advice from her father to find a more stable profession, Gilchrist enrolled at Eastern Illinois University.[1] She studied with the hopes of teaching and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in art education in 1973.[1] After graduation, she worked for several years as a substitute teacher and later, as an art teacher with various public school systems including the Chicago Board of Education (1973-1976), Harvey Schools (1976-1979), Cambridge School Department (1980-1981), and Joliet Public Schools (1982-1983).[1] During her time teaching, Gilchrist enrolled at the University of Northern Iowa, eventually graduating with a Master of Art in Painting in 1979.[1] She also holds an M.F.A. in writing from Vermont College and a Ph.D. in English from Madison University.[4]
During her undergraduate program, Gilchrist married Arthur Johnson on August 1, 1970.[1] A daughter was born of the marriage.[5] Gilchrist and Johnson divorced in August 1980.[1] Gilchrist married Kelvin Keith Gilchrist on September 5, 1983.[1] Gilchrist's second child, William Kelvin, was born.[1]
Throughout her teaching career, Gilchrist continued to paint and exhibit her work. Eventually, she made the acquaintance of Eloise Greenfield, a published author of African American children's literature.[1] Impressed by her depiction of normal African American families, Gilchrist gifted Greenfield slides of her work and a picture of herself.[1] Greenfield suggested, after seeing Gilchrist's work, that she should become an illustrator.[1] Soon after, Gilchrist met with editors at Philomel Books, a New York-based publishing house, to work as an illustrator.[1]
Gilchrist has since worked with three generations of Greenfield's family. Gilchrist's first published book was 1988's Children of Long Ago, written by Greenfield's mother Lessie Blanche (née Jones) Little.[6] Greenfield & Gilchrist published their first collaboration, the book Nathaniel Talking, in 1989. They have published 27 works together to date. Greenfield credits their productive and prolific working relationship to the mutual respect they have for each other's work and artistic processes.[7] Gilchrist has also collaborated on two books, TheBaby (1994) and Waiting for Christmas (1996) with Greenfield's daughter Monica Greenfield.
Since her first publication, Gilchrist has worked on 73 other children's books.[8] Though she has primarily worked as an illustrator for other authors, Gilchrist has written and self-illustrated several books.[1] Her first authored book, Indigo and Moonlight Gold, captured a young African American girl's realization of the passage of time. It was published in 1993.[9] Her second, Madelia, published in 1997, tells the story of a young African American girl who would rather get lost in her painting than attend her father's sermons in church.[10]
She continues to write and illustrate children's books from her home near Chicago, Illinois.[2]
Gilchrist works in a variety of mediums, including watercolor, mixed-media collage, gouache, pastels and pencil.[11][12] Many of the books she has worked on focus on the African-American experience over time and depict a diverse range of people, such as slaves in the United States, modern-day children participating in everyday activities,[13] and well-known figures such as Barack Obama[14] and Michael Jordan.[7]
InNathaniel Talking, Gilchrist used large charcoal drawings to illustrate and romanticize the moods and happenings of the eponymous character, Nathaniel.[13] Gilchrist's soft charcoal illustrations are also seen in Children of Long Ago.[13] Gilchrist has also used collage to great success in The Great Migration: Journey to the North where portraits of travelers are interspersed with photographs, newspaper headlines, maps, and small painted vignettes.[15] Watercolor images were used in The Girl Who Buried Her Dreams in a Can, an autobiographical account of a girl's journey to education in rural Zimbabwe.[11]
Gilchrist's collaborator, Eloise Greenfield, has described Gilchrist's style as thoroughly emotional with particular attention paid to the expressive nature of her character's eyes.[7] Gilchrist has consistently used human models to realistically portray these characters and the often, everyday occurrences of their lives.[1]
She received the 1990 Coretta Scott King Award for her illustrations in Nathaniel Talking (cowritten with Eloise Greenfield), and their collaboration on Night on Neighborhood Street earned Gilchrist a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor award in 1992[16] and was also selected as a Reading Rainbow Book.[4] Gilchrist received the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the National Association of Black Storytellers in 2014.[4][17] Her work has also been recognized by the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Parents' Choice.[2] Her body of work led to her induction into the Society of Illustrators in 2001 and the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent in 1999.[2]
How They Got Over: African Americans and the Call of the Sea (by Eloise Greenfield, 2002) ISBN9780060289911
Honey I Love (by Eloise Greenfield. Gilchrist illustrated the 2003 edition, the original was published in 1978 as an unillustrated poem, 2003) ISBN9780060091248
