Mary Azarian is a consummate gardener, an avid reader, and a champion bridge player. Mary has illustrated over forty books, and in 1999, Snaowflake Bentley, (Houghton Mifflin) a picture book about Vermont's famous photographer of snow crystals was awarded the Caldecott Award by the American Library Association.

After studying printmaking with Leonard Baskin, Mary graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and in 1963, she moved to a small hill farm in northern Vermont. She and her partner farmed with horses and oxen, kept chickens, a milk cow and sheep, made maple syrup and raised three sons while maintaining a large vegetable and flower garden. These years on the farm became the basis for the subjects Mary has chosen to depict in her woodcut prints. Mary’s prints of rural country life can be found in homes and classrooms throughout New England.

In 1969, she started Farmhouse Press and began producing woodcut prints first printing her blocks by hand and eventually using a 19th century Vandercook proof press. Her initial woodcuts were printed in black and white, but soon, she began experimenting by adding color to her prints. Trained as a painter as well as a printmaker, she developed a non-traditional technique of adding the color with water based paints rather than inking then printing individual woodblocks.

This method allows each print to be unique and the colors to be varied. Most of the prints produced at Farmhouse Press are printed on the Vandercook, but in some cases, a woodblock may prove difficult to print properly and is then printed offset. All of Mary’s prints are individually hand colored. For information about presentations, school visits and for the purchase of Mary’s original artwork, please visit www.maryazarian.com.