Byard said that as she was growing up she was passionate about reading, and loved books, but always felt that there were no books or images of people that looked like her, her family, and extended family, and how they lived as people. During college, there were very few Black students. In an effort to connect with other Black artists, Byard went to the 1971
Where We At exhibition in the village called
Where We At: Black Women Artists: 1971, and was able to connect with other Black women artists like
Faith Ringgold. She became a part of the group. At Westbeth, there was a Black Artists Guild that Byard said was formative. The Black Artists Guild that was initially a theater group founded in 1970. Byard went to see a production of
Slave Ship, a play written by
Amiri Baraka produced at
Brooklyn Academy of Music. The play involved audience participation and singing. She was inspired by a character in the play and did a large painting based on the play. It turned out that many cast members also lived in Westbeth, and were part of this organization, based on
Malcolm X's material left from
Organization of Afro-American Unity, using the seven principles. Byard joined the group and participated in writing and making art.
Illustration After finishing art school, Byard found work as a magazine illustration artist before shifting her focus to children's books. Her interest in performing arts led to one of her first book projects, a biography of ballet dancer
Arthur Mitchell, who founded the
Dance Theater of Harlem. Byard returned to Nigeria as a delegate to the second
Black and African Festival of Art and Culture (FESTAC) in
Lagos in 1977. Her travel experiences informed the
charcoal illustrations for her next children's book,
Three African Tales by Adjai Robinson. In
The Black Snowman (1991), Byard used pastels to illustrate a fantastical story in which a boy brings a black snowman to life using city snow and a magical
kente cloth. She was a contributing artist for the children's anthology
Jump Back, Honey: The Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1999), which also featured artwork by
Jerry Pinkney and
Faith Ringgold. Her earth art installations had reference points in vernacular front-yard decorations and traditional African-American burial sites. One example of such outdoor installations is
Praisesong for Charles (1988), which was originally shown in
Baltimore. In 1992 she collaborated with
Clarissa Sligh on an environmental, mixed-media "portrait" of
Malcolm X for the
Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis. The piece she showed, titled "Imani, the Seventh Day" (1993), was an installation featuring a chair with a ladderlike back and gourds (which she had grown herself) hanging off it, standing in a tray filled with black eyed peas and pennies. On the chair's seat were corn kernels and red and green candles. == Other work ==