To Be Aware - Interview with Artist Daniel Minter

Video Description

Daniel Minter is an acclaimed artist known for his work in painting and assemblage. His overall body of work often deals with themes of displacement and diaspora, ordinary/extraordinary blackness, spirituality in the Afro-Atlantic world, and the (re)creation of the meanings of home. Minter has exhibited extensively at venues including the Portland Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Bates College Museum of Art, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Bowdoin College Art Museum, and the Northwest African American Art Museum, among many other venues. Minter is the recipient of the prestigious Joyce Award and the distinguished Caldecott Medal (both 2021). He has illustrated over fifteen children’s books, many of them award winning, including the Coretta Scott King Illustration Honor. Minter was also commissioned in both 2004 and 2011 to create Kwanzaa stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. As founding director of Maine Freedom Trails, he has helped highlight the history of the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement in New England. For the past 15 years Minter has raised awareness of the forced removal in 1912 of an interracial community on Maine’s Malaga Island. His formative work on the subject of Malaga emerges from Minter’s active engagement with the island, its descendants, archeologists, anthropologists and scholars. This dedication to righting history was pivotal in having the island designated a public preserve.Minter serves as co-founder of Indigo Arts Alliance (Portland), a non-profit dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of people of African descent. To date the organization has hosted over 28 Black and Brown artists from across the globe. Minter was born in Georgia and is based in Portland, Maine. He is a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from The Maine College of Art and Design. Please consider supporting this project with a monthly contribution at https://www.lightsoutgallery.org/donate This video is sponsored by Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s Virtual Look Inside Educator’s Portal made possible by the Sherman Family Foundation and KHR McNeely Family Foundation.