Daniel Minter

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.

Cynthia Thompson

I have always thought that artists, and their art, mature and grow throughout their lifetimes. Now, after many years of art making, I realize that what was there in my heart when I was young is still the prime motivating factor: storytelling. There were stories within my first drawings, and in my metal and clay sculptures. Later, as I worked for an MFA at The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I found a new way of telling stories: performance art. This freed me from the “box” of the gallery, and it required me to assemble a team to accomplish my art projects.

After Colorado State (BFA sculpture, BA education) I taught art in Boston area high schools. I taught by example, making large pots next to the students. I showed their work twice yearly, and helped many get into art school. I entered the MFA program at the Museum School as a clay sculptor and metalsmith, but soon took my work off the pedestal, out into the public, doing art performances in Boston and in New York at the Kitchen and Franklin Furnace. As a visiting artist at ASU, teaching performance art and installation art, I realized that I needed more than just me to do large scale public art. I started Transformit in 1987.

Lawrence Hardy

Lawrence Hardy is a self taught photographer. He discovered his obsession with photography shortly after kicking a 9 plus year opiate addiction. He started taking photos with just his iPhone, then worked his way to film 35mm purchasing a canon AE1, Nikon F3, and a Leica point and shoot. The real magic happened when he bought his Fujifilm Xt3.