Carye Bye was born on July 14, 1975 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has lived in Illinois and Georgia, but did the most of her growing up in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Carye grew up with many opportunities to be creative. Carye's parents claim no artistic talent, but both play music and her mom sews and her dad illustrated a music book using collage and drawing. Her maternal grandmother, Grandma Aasness, sewed, knitted, and made dolls, sock monkeys, and other crafts. She remembers being taught how to make pom-poms by her grandma and with this newfound knowledge, her first art business idea was born: making and selling pom-poms with her older sister, Sarah, at the end of their street like a lemonade stand. Her paternal grandmother, Grandma Johnson, made watercolors and they would paint, and they would go to local art shows when she visited her in Florida.

Like most children, Carye participated in many arts and crafts activities through Brownies and art camps, but never realized that artmaking was her calling in life until high school when Carye began to take art and photography classes. Encouraged by her favorite art teacher at Eden Prairie High School, Joey Terriquez, Carye made a giant paper mache sculpture of a frog, but instead of painting it, she covered it in photocopied pictures of the stuff she loved: the rock band U2, sunflowers, her cat, friends, poems, and childhood photographs. Joey even had Carye enter her frog in the yearly school art showcase.

Also in high school, Carye discovered the art of creating homemade photocopied 'zines in which she could explore various topics of interest to her. It was her first venture in being self-published. Carye decided after viewing various U2 fanzines that she would make her own called "Smelly" which looked at the silly and artsy side of the band. "The Bizzare" was a 'zine that Carye co-created with a friend that covered topics from bananas to bathtubs. Carye would also go on to make other 'zines, including a mini 'zine that told the history of KUDZU (a non-native plant found in the South) through poems, drawings, and stories which she sold in the lunchroom for 25 cents.

The summer before her freshman year in college, Carye traveled to Ireland by herself for a month, after becoming interested in the country's rich art and culture. Most of her time was occupied by visiting penpals and famous sites.

In the fall of 1993, she attended Augsburg College in the heart of the culturally diverse Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis. Vowing to major in anything but art, she ended up taking two art classes, drawing and printmaking, at the prompting of her advisor (who also happened to be the chair of the art department) since the classes she wanted to take were closed. Although socially satisfying, her drawing class left something to be desired, but her printmaking class resulted in her love of creating prints. Carye enjoyed learning the many different kinds of printmaking, but relief and screen printing were her favorites. She discovered printmaking was a way to make multiple copies of an original idea, and like her 'zines, she could share them with many people.

Also during her time at Augsburg, Carye combined her love of art and her love of community, especially teaching art to inner-city children. Various projects included an internship where Carye worked with small groups of children in 'zine making workshops, coordinating a project called "Time Fragments," that involved Augsburg students who interviewed senior citizens while charter school students illustrated the stories, and teaching a class for charter school teens in black and white photography.

As she matured throughout her college years, she returned to Ireland during her junior year (1995-1996) to study in Cork. During this time in Ireland, she became very focused on exploring the country and taking photographs in black and white. She always felt like she was an outsider looking in, but it made it easier for her to document her surroundings through photography.

Upon returning, Carye found herself more and more interested in art history after taking many classes in archeology and art history in Cork. By the time she graduated from college in 1997, she was one modern art history class short of an art history major. However, she finished her college career as an art major with learning how to do woodcut prints -- which she preferred over linoleum -- and getting ready for two art shows. Her senior show entitled "Éire: an Cuis Geal mi Chroi" which means "Ireland: the Bright Pulse of my Heart" featured her photographs from Ireland and her new series of prints she had made during the year. The other show she organized was for her photography students featuring their best work hung in the art department at Augsburg.

Carye spent her post-college years in Minneapolis holding various jobs, most of them non-art related. She traveled to Ireland a third time in the fall of 1997 and spent two months there. It was at this time she made sketches for woodcuts that would later be created in the spring of 1998. She found some success by displaying and selling some of her photography and prints in local cafes, but by the summer of 1999, she was ready for a change of location. Carye and her 16-year-old cat, Scooter, traversed the western United States for their final destination, San Francisco. Carye says it was one of the best trips she's ever made.

Once settled, she got a job on Hyde Street Pier at the Maritime Bookstore, where she was the main window dresser. Carye created specific themes for the window such as sailor or pirate fashions and "the Bizarro window" featuring weird and strange photos and stories of the sea. She also enrolled in a letterpress class which changed her printmaking forever; she could now add text to her images. Her first self-published art chapbook, "The Pea Green Chair," was created at this time. Carye took in the visual culture that San Francisco had to offer: the incredible views of the bay, the colorful junk shops in Chinatown, the hilly landscape, and the many major art museums. Although she had many rewarding experiences, the rent for her share of a converted storefront in the Mission District doubled and her pay did not, so she found it time to move again. Portland would be her next destination in life and she would find the city to have many more advantages over San Francisco.

Being a community-involved and community-loving person, Portland had what Carye desired: the Independent Publishing Resource Center, friends she met through selling her prints at monthly art gallery street happenings, and a public that started to collect her series of hand-colored woodcut and letterpress prints. Like photographs and 'zines, Carye's postcards and prints are art that everyone can have, easily reproduced, but every one done by hand with her eye for the whimsical not often easily found in life.

Carye currently resides in North Portland with her now 18-year-old cat and is a collector of many things ranging from bathtub postcards to green crayons. Her artmaking is informed by the rich tradition of Chinese woodblock prints, her Ireland experiences, maritime imagery, contemporary children's book illustrators like Calef Brown, and old-fashioned advertising.

-Emily D. Haraldson 1/01/2003