Borrowed from the writing of author and poet Rachel E. Harding, PhD, her expression hidden mouth talking resonates with this new body of work. My personal interpretations are: the literal idea of concealing the mouth to relay a message in secret; the drum that delivers messages over distance, the voice of the ancestors that guides without being seen, the hidden inner voice. The voice of tools or instruments that can be used to speak when our mouths cannot.
— Daniel Minter
Viewing “Hidden Mouth Talking” is like immersing oneself in an all-encompassing epic novel or film. We are carried along a story that traverses centuries, affects thousands of lives and pauses to dwell, here and there, in personal tales, tragedies, joys and turning points. By the time we reach “The End,” we are satiated, transformed and closer in some way to the people and events that have shaped the narrative. And we feel we understand a culture, a time, a place and its people with much more nuance and appreciation than before.
Read the full review HERE.
— Jorge Arango, Portland Press Herald
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 Farnsworth Museum, 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; Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story, winner of a Best Book Award from the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio; and The Riches of Oseola McCarty, named an Honor Book by the Carter G. Woodson Awards. Minter served on a team of artists commissioned by the City of Seattle Parks Department to create a water park in an urban Seattle neighborhood. 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. 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. In 2019, Minter co-founded Indigo Arts Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of people of African descent. Minter is a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from The Maine College of Art.
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