Tag Archives: US Postal Service

Black History Month Spotlight – Barbara Higgins Bond

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bhm bhbArtist and illustrator Barbara Higgins Bond is today’s feature.  At the age of 12, she began painting and drawing as a hobby. Today, her work for the U.S. Postal Service and corporate clients has earned her a national reputation as an illustrator and commercial artist.

Born and raised in Little Rock, Bond decided her career after taking an elective art course at Phillips University in Enid, Okla. She transferred to Memphis College of Arts, earning a bachelor of/inc arts degree in advertising design.

Book covers, posters, record album covers, television commercials, magazine covers and collector’s plates are just some of the bearers of Bond’s extraordinary talent. Her most memorable projects throughout her 40-year career include designs of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt and Mansa Mussa, a 14th-century king of Mali, for Anheuser- Busch’s Great King and Queens of Africa series; commemorative stamps of W E. B. DuBois and inventor Jan Matzeliger for the Postal Service’s Black Heritage series; and Cognac Hennessy’s 1997 Calendar celebrating The History of Jazz & African-American Culture.

Bond’s work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago; The Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, Ind.; and at the Memphis College of Arts. Among her awards are the CEBA Award of Merit for work featured in Black Enterprise magazine; the Medal of Honor by the Arkansas Sesquicentennial Committee; and the Multicultural Publishers Exchange Book Award of Excellence for her illustration of Toyomi Igus’ When I Was Little.

Higgins Bond’s clients include the Bradford Exchange, McGraw-Hill, Franklin Mint, NBC, Hennessy Cognac, Anheuser-Busch, Frito-Lay and Columbia House.  She has illustrated more than 37 books for children and adults and is an adjunct professor of illustration at the Nossi College of Art in Nashville, where she lives.

In 1997, she was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.  For more on Barbara Higgins Bond and other inductees into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, visit the permanent exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. That museum is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

New Johnny Cash stamp issued today by US Postal Service

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cashstampJohnny Cash (1932-2003) is best remembered internationally as a country music artist, but we feel his influence just about everywhere—from rock and folk to blues and gospel. The Johnny Cash (Forever®) stamp is being issued this year as part of the exciting new Music Icons stamp series.

Resembling the appearance of a 45 rpm record sleeve, the square stamp features a photograph taken by Frank Bez during the photo session for Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash (1963). In the photo, Cash stares out at the viewer through a veil of shadow, his brooding expression fitting for an artist known to so many people simply as “the Man in Black.”

Cash found inspiration for his music in the stories of outlaws and laborers, and in his own life experience. A child of the Depression, he grew up in rural Arkansas, and the culture of that time and place—especially the Bible and gospel and country music—remained with him all his life. Themes of redemption, loneliness, love, loss, and death colored his music with a gritty realism that differed markedly from other socially conscious popular music. “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” he sings famously in “Folsom Prison Blues.”

By the 1960s, Cash had become one of the top names in country music, with a string of hits that included “Cry, Cry, Cry,” “I Walk the Line,” and the Grammy award-winning “A Boy Named Sue.” Though his popularity waned in the 1970s and 1980s, Cash made a remarkable resurgence in the 1990s, culminating in several more Grammy awards. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

Greg Breeding served as art director and designer for the stamp.

The Johnny Cash stamp is being issued as a Forever® stamp. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.

Made in the USA.