FAM is closed for exhibition change. We reopen to the public on Saturday, February 8, 2025.

Art of the Word

The Simply Magnificent Art of Ashley Spires

August 9, 2025 to June 28, 2026
Contemporary Gallery

Creating museum exhibitions based on children’s books is very fulfilling to me. The illustrations in children’s picture books hold the first visual art that children see, and I strive to make what they see in a museum exhibition profound, relevant, and positively impactful.

The main protagonist in the book The Most Magnificent Maker’s A to Z, which is featured this year in FAM’s annual Art of the Word exhibition, is a girl who loves to make and invent things! I find it important in the current times that we lift up girls in whatever ways we can. So having a clever and fearless girl be a star of Ashley Spires’ Most Magnificent books is encouraging to me as it should be for everyone. It is important for children to have books that can inspire all children equally, and this one fits the bill.

When I first discovered illustrator and author Ashley Spires’ Most Magnificent book series, I was touched by the playfulness of her graphic imagery and by the charm and wit of her words. Yes, she is a digital artist, but she is an exceptional and very unique one. She is also a great storyteller, having been inspired by the quirky inventiveness of her favorite childhood author Roald Dahl.

The Most Magnificent Maker’s A to Z is a book about a little girl who strives to be an inventor and a maker. She has perseverance and vulnerability at the same time. She makes mistakes but grows from those mistakes. The little girl learns it is okay to get frustrated when you are trying to do something great and have a setback. The idiom “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” comes to mind as a great mantra for this book. What message could be a better one for kids? The book encourages children to keep trying.

Choosing the alphabet book from Ashley Spires’ Most Magnificent series for a museum exhibition made sense. Having 26 letters and 26 inspiring and encouraging words to go with them really is magnificent! Looking at each of the 26 images (plus the cover) will allow children to explore the meaning of each of those A to Z words for themselves.

Ashley Spires’ books are very personal to her. They are a part of her personal story. It is no wonder that her bestselling books have won numerous awards, have been translated into multiple languages, have sold around the world, and have been adapted for animated films.

Ashley grew up in Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada, twenty miles south of Vancouver. As a child she was always creating--drawing, sculpting, writing stories, cross-stitching. She attended the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver and began illustrating books by hand soon after. She later completed a post-graduate degree in illustration from Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Since 2014, Ashley has been predominately creating her illustration art on a computer, although she still occasionally sketches. She happily lives and works outside of Vancouver with her dog and numerous cats.

Susan Yost Filgate
Art of the Word Exhibition Curator
FAM Education Director