Walk into the first gallery of the group exhibition Thresholds at the Haggerty Museum of Art, and you’ll encounter dozens of hand brooms installed in long rows. Scraps of ribbons, cords, and braids in a vast array of colors and textures bind the small tools together, with raw branches from a fallen tree jutting from the top. Made during a participatory workshop this past July at Lynden Sculpture Garden, the sweepers are what artist Daniel Minter calls a “talisman, tool, and object of remembrance.”
Minter has long considered the spiritual dimension of the items we use in daily life. The broom, for example, has been an ongoing topic of inquiry as he questions what it means to cleanse and care for one’s space and self and how those acts of devotion are also ones that bring empowerment. It’s fitting that Minter sees his work as a service, a sort of public offering he can provide through sculpture, drawing, community projects, and more.
Based in Portland, Maine, for more than two decades, Minter was raised in Georgia during Jim Crow. He and his family lived across the street from a white-only swimming pool, and schools were segregated until the artist reached fourth grade. “When you start seeing the systems that create these inequalities, you also can begin to notice systems that empower you,” he says one morning over a video call. “You notice the systems that give you a stronger sense of yourself.”
One of the latter was his mother’s near constant singing and the artist’s own desire to create. As an adolescent, Minter would carve small sticks and paint signs for neighbors who needed them. He went on to study in illustration in college and today, still collaborates on the occasional children’s book. His work for Going Down Home with Daddy even won the prestigious Caldecott Medal.
At the Haggerty Museum, we witness Minter’s multi-faceted practice. In addition to the community-created display of brooms, the artist presents vibrant carved sculptures painted with stylized portraits and superimposed motifs. The figurative assemblages combine found objects with carefully selected materials that, as the artist sees it, become vessels for spiritual and ancestral knowledge.
“I came from a people with a long and complex tradition of creating exactly these kinds of tools—objects of communication and transformation,” Minter writes in a catalog essay for Thresholds, which pairs the museum’s holdings with the artist’s sculptures. “The objects and masks from the Haggerty Museum collection bring my work into direct contact with that timeless technology. They allow me to see my carving as a way of reconnecting with and continuing
a living system of communication with the spirits, the ancestors, the unseen.”
Minter is also intentional about setting the scene for such communion to occur. Nature is the foundation, and each wall within his part of the exhibition represents a different facet: blue for the ocean, red for fire and thunder, and green for the forest. Verdant settings also appear in the central, freestanding sculpture, which positions an abstract, totemic figure atop astroturf.
Typically presented outdoors or in a forest, the two-sided form is Minter’s way of instilling hope. “How do you find the things you need to see a future when the objects before you say different?” he asks. This sculpture is the artist’s answer to that question and way of offering peace to anyone who encounters the piece and is willing to listen to its message.
“Do objects transmit spirituality? No, they remind us of our spirituality. They allow us to translate. A particular object can remind you that you can think deeply and pass this obstacle that is in front of you,” he adds. “That’s a service.”
Thresholds is on view through December 19 at the Haggerty, which is part of Milwaukee’s Marquette University. Explore Minter’s practice on his website and Instagram.
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