Am I Pretty When I Fly?: An Album of Upside Down Drawings

By Joan Baez

Like a long, funny letter from an old friend, an album of drawings by the legendary singer and activist for social justice, Joan Baez.

Since retiring from active performing, Baez has focused her formidable talents on painting and drawing. This collection of drawings shows another side of Baez: lovingly loose and charming sketches on reoccurring themes such as politics, relationships, women, animals, and family. Each section, organized thematically, includes an introductory piece by the artist. Baez approaches her line drawings as exercises in freedom: she begins drawing upside down—often using her non-dominant hand—without any preconceived notion of where the lines might lead her.

Beginning with her seminal debut album in 1960, Baez has been a musical force of nature of incalculable influence whose earliest recordings fed a host of traditional ballads into the rock vernacular. In 1963, she introduced Bob Dylan to the world, beginning a tradition of mutual mentoring that continued across her many recordings. As a lifetime advocate for non-violent social change, she marched on the front line of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr., shined a spotlight on the Free Speech Movement, took to the fields with Cesar Chavez, organized resistance to the Vietnam War, and inspired Vaclav Havel in his fight for a Czech Republic.

Am I Pretty When I Fly? reveals yet another side of a beloved icon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781567927559

Joan Baez

Joan Baez is a dynamic force of nature. Her commitment to music and social activism has earned global recognition, ranging from induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, to the Ambassador of Conscience Award, Amnesty International’s highest honor. Retired from active performing since 2019, she has devoted much of her time to the “Mischief Makers” series of paintings, portraits that immortalize risk-taking visionaries she has known, who have brought about social change through history, from Dr. Martin Luther King and Bob Dylan to the Dalai Lama and Patti Smith. Ms. Baez’s acclaimed book of drawings, Am I Pretty When I Fly? was also published by Godine.

Book preview

How I Got Turned Upside Down:

An Introduction

When I was very young, I drew a little girl with her hair flying in the wind. She was holding a kite, which was flying in the opposite direction, but all in all, it was a pretty good depiction for a child.

Soon afterwards, I graduated to drawing cows with enormous udders, then tepees.

At school, with lots of crayons, I filled an entire sheet of construction paper with a picture of the earth, then took a paper towel and rubbed the whole thing until it shone. You should try it.

In third grade, I drew pictures of Bambi and Thumper on plain paper from an art pad. I cut them to size and sold them to my classmates for three cents apiece. I did the outlines first, copying my miniature porcelain animals and pictures from storybooks. Then I filled them in with colored pencils. It wasn’t the three cents that gave me satisfaction; it was the fact that no one else around, I thought, could draw as well as I could.

I’d show the pictures to my mother and father, who always praised my little presentations. They would have done so even if the sketch had been average, but they knew I