JOIN US! The awards presentation: Tuesday, December 10 at SPACE Gallery.
Doors open at 5:30 PM | Presentation starting at 6:00 PM. All supporters and friends of Daniel, Karen, and the MCA are welcome to attend. Registration is required.
The Maine Crafts Association proudly announces Daniel Minter as a 2024 MCA Maine Craft Artist Award recipient.
The Maine Crafts Association annually honors individual craft artists with the Maine Craft Artist Award to recognize them for exceptional bodies of work and/or their contributions to the field of craft in Maine. The award acknowledges the artist’s dedication conferring a distinguishing mark of excellence.
The award is selected by an appointed juror, guided by the benchmarks of excellence in craftsmanship, inspired design, a singular voice or style, and a career of service to the field. The 2024 honorees were selected from many well-deserving public nominations by Donna McNeil, the founding Executive Director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation.
“Daniel’s printmaking expertise is second to none. Finely wrought, filled with depth and meaning, to engage with his imagery is to be transported and educated. As co-founder of Indigo Arts [Alliance], he works as a mentor and advocate for countless others. His earlier work reclaiming the Abyssinian Church, his work on the Maine Freedom Trail Underground Railroad, his Kwanzaa stamp design, his Malaga Island series and his continued strong exhibition presence illuminate his profile as artist, activist, mentor. An astonishing human being.” – Donna McNeil.
Daniel Minter is a painter, illustrator, printmaker, sculpture artist, educator, and mentor. His visual body of work is deeply rooted in the profound questions of identity, displacement, and diaspora, recreating meanings of home and spirituality.
Minter is well known for exploring the iconography of the Afro-Atlantic experience in his bas-relief, mixed-media assemblages. The work uses a wide range of materials to portray “resilience, resistance, and healing”. His practice is motivated by “channeling his ancestors” as Minter explains he “wants them to know that they have projected out into the future.” His works are deeply thought-provoking, showing an interconnectedness between the past, present, and future.
In addition to his extensive body of work, his career of distinguished projects and roles has uplifted numerous artists along the way. Minter is a co-founder of Indigo Arts Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of people of African descent. Through his work at Indigo Arts Alliance, the organization has received numerous national grants and provided residencies, facilities, and mentorship to artists from across the globe.
Minter is a founding member of Maine Freedom Trail, an installation of granite and bronze markers on thirteen sites of key locations of the abolitionist movement in Portland, Maine. Additionally, Minter is known for his Malaga Island series, his commissioned Kwanza stamps for the United States Post Office, and for illustrating over fifteen children’s books.
His works have been exhibited across the country and permanently acquired by many institutions including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Portland Museum of Art, The Hood Museum of Art, The Charles H. Wright Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Bates College Art Museum, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Bowdoin College Art Museum, Farnsworth Art Museum, Bates College Museum of Art, The David C. Driskell Center and the Northwest African American Art Museum.
Through his exceptional work and dedication to the arts, Minter was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from both Colby College and Maine College of Art & Design.
On behalf of the Maine Crafts Association, Donna McNeil also selected artist Karen Gelardi of South Portland, Maine as a 2024 Maine Craft Award recipient.
Both Gelardi and Minter will be honored at the annual awards presentation and ceremony held on December 10 at SPACE Gallery at 5:30 pm. The presentation will include speakers on behalf of the artists, the awards tradition of gifting a handmade pin that reflects the honorees to the recipients, and some words from Maine Crafts Association’s leadership. The public, friends, and supporters of both honorees are welcome to register for and attend the presentation to celebrate the recipients.
Space is limited, registration is required.
