BIOS

Daniel Minter

Daniel Minter is an American artist known for his work in the mediums of 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 meanings of home. Minter works in varied media – canvas, wood, metal, paper. twine, rocks, nails, paint. This cross-fertilization strongly informs his artistic sensibility. His carvings become assemblages. His paintings are often sculptural.

Minter’s work has been featured in numerous institutions and galleries including the Portland Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, The Charles H. Wright Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Bates College, University of Southern Maine, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, The David C. Driskell Center and the Northwest African American Art Museum. A travel grant from the National Endowment for the Arts enabled him to live and work in Salvador, Bahia Brazil where he established relationships that have continued to nurture his life and work in important ways.

Minter has illustrated over a dozen children’s books, including Going Down Home with Daddy which won a 2020 Caldecott Honor and Ellen’s Broom which won a Coretta Scott King Illustration Honor. He 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. Minter is a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from The Maine College of Art.

Daniel is also the co-founder of Indigo Arts Alliance in Portland, Maine. Indigo Arts Alliance builds global connections by bringing together Black and Brown artists from diverse backgrounds to engage in their creative process, while building lasting relationships rooted in co-mentorship. An integral aspect of the Indigo vision is to provide Maine based artists of African descent access to a broader range of practicing artists of color from around the world.

Elizabeth A. Jabar

elizabethjabar.com/futuremothers.org

Elizabeth A. Jabar is a feminist printmaker who explores a range of personal-political issues in her work including cultural identity, representation, equity and maternal ethics. Her practice is located in the studio, the classroom and the community where she co-creates collaborative and participatory projects with students, colleagues and community members. Her hybrid works on paper and cloth display a highly personal visual language that incorporates motifs from popular culture, folk art, religious traditions and textiles. Elizabeth’s printed objects and environments embody printmakings’ democratic tradition of resistance and collective power and reflect her commitment to art as a tool for social change.

Her most recent social practice project Future Bridges is generously funded by a grant from the Warhol Foundation Kindling Fund. Future Bridges is a socially engaged art project creating open spaces and platforms for community building, public action and social change, and includes a mobile tent and a series of community actions within the City of Portland. The project is part of her ongoing collaborative endeavor Future Mothers. Using printmaking as a platform Future Mothers construct densely layered objects and environments for practicing maternal ethics and responding to social-political events.

Her works have been shown at galleries and museums nationally and internationally, including Victoria Arts Connection, Victoria, BC, Canada, Red Gher Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Women Networking, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Pyramid Atlantic, Rhode Island School of Design, Long Beach Island Foundation for the Arts and Sciences, Colby College Museum of Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, William Patterson University, Hunter College and The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY.

Jabar’s work is in the collections of Southern Graphics Council, Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin, Wheaton College, University of New England, New Britain Museum of American Art, Portland Museum of Art, Pratt Institute, New York Public Library, Lillie M. Klevin Print Collection, Bemidji State University, Amity Arts Foundation, Tides Institute, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and Maine Arts Commission. Elizabeth has received recognition for her work including grants from the Kindling Fund and the Maine Arts Commission, and awards from Maine Campus Compact, Vermont Studio Center, the Quimby Colony, Arts and Equity Initiative and Zea Mays Printmaking Studios.

Elizabeth is the inaugural Director of Civic Engagement and Community Partnerships at Colby College, where she is designing and launching an innovative program expanding community based learning and active citizenship. She was formerly the Chair of the Printmaking Program and Director of Public Engagement at Maine College of Art where she designed and launched MECA’s distinctive social practice undergraduate curriculum the Public Engagement Minor. She also served in an administrative role at MECA as Associate Dean. She received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and her MFA from Pratt Institute.

ABOUT HINGE COLLABORATIVE

Hinge Collaborative is the artist team of Sean Alonzo Harris and Elizabeth Jabar. Growing up we experienced the power of art as a place of refuge and an expression of our true selves. We both spent time in after-school arts programs with teachers and mentors who showed us that artmaking was our first voice, a way to be seen and communicate with the world. Making art unlocked our purpose, gave meaning to our lives and provided a space for joy, healing, community, and pathway to our future. After 30 years of experience in making, exhibiting, teaching and public engagement initiatives we are launching a creative studio to share our models and strategies for socially engaged art and civic action. Our practices facilitate deep learning, forge relationships and design solutions through active participation, social experience, and creative experimentation.

The work of Hinge Collaborative is located in our studio and our community. Our efforts aim to create strategies and solutions to bring more artists of color to the table of community cultural development to ensure greater equity, representation, and participation. We produce a range of social change projects that amplify the work of artists and designers of color and connect youth, emerging and established artists, together with community partners, including art institutions, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and educational institutions.

We are professional studio artists and consultants to various for-profit and nonprofit entities and design arts programming, curriculum and community partnerships that promote civic engagement, mentorship and cultural participation. Our endeavors include workshops, exhibitions, public creative interventions and participatory projects, limited edition prints, photographs, and community cultural events.

Resonant Objects: An Artist Workshop with Daniel Minter