Each year, the Maine Crafts Association 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 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, founding executive director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation.

This year, Karen Gelardi and Daniel Minter won the honor of receiving a Maine Craft Artist Award.

KAREN GELARDI

“Karen’s distinctive eye, courageous mark making and commitment to the work across decades coupled with her high aesthetic and continued risk-taking brings her work to the fore, blurring the boundary — if it truly does exist — between fine craft and fine art,” states Donna McNeil, founding executive director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. “Additionally, Karen’s work at Designtex has supported the aspirations and ideas of countless artists, her work with Andrea Zittel through Smockshop sets a goal for the future in terms of consumption and need, and her sidewalk art exhibit and garden is a truly inspirational gift to the community.”

Gelardi creates work around the idea of resiliency and adaptation, inspired by strategies found in nature and industry. Her work blends traditional and contemporary mediums and technologies integrating art, craft, and design, and reflects tensions around utopian promises of Bauhaus design theories uniting art and industrial production.

Her work begins with observational ink drawings of natural forms. The drawing takes a journey, being reproduced, reduced, and transformed into different ideations of adaptable and modular forms in print, fabric, sculpture, mixed media, and installation. These mutations highlight the adaptability and inherent qualities of the original imagery in an effort to explore and model resilient systems.

Whether it be a textile design, an installation or a print project, Gelardi is committed to “integrating creativity with practical and social considerations.” Currently, Gelardi works at Designtex, a company specializing in materials for built environments, as a Principal Designer and Collaborations Liaison focusing on digitally printed products. In her role, Gelardi engages fellow Maine artists to create new patterns for the company, providing them with production resources and economic opportunities. She also collaborates with creatives from around the world, museums, and foundations.

In a series of projects she calls “New Factories,” Gelardi investigates the role of craft within various production models such as grassroots manufacturing, mass customization, on-demand production and 3D printing.

Gelardi’s fabric sculptures are an exploration of resilient systems. Fabric-covered ropes incorporating her printed fabrics are modular and adaptable. These elements exemplify resilience through their ability to be presented in various configurations, with drawings that interconnect, camouflage, and transform, often utilizing salvaged and repurposed materials.

Gelardi, who received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, has lived in Maine for more than 40 years. She has been awarded residencies at Surf Point, Hewnoaks Artist Colony and the Quimby Colony. She has also received grants from the Maine Arts Commission and the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and her work has been published by Wingate Studio.

DANIEL MINTER

“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,” states Donna McNeil, founding executive director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. “As cofounder 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.”

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 cofounder of Indigo Arts Alliance, a nonprofit 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. Additionally, Minter is known for his Malaga Island series, his commissioned Kwanza stamps for the United States Post Office, and for illustrating over 15 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. Minter was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from both Colby College and Maine College of Art & Design.

Gelardi and Minter will be honored at the annual awards presentation and ceremony held on Dec. 10 at SPACE Gallery in Portland. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and a presentation will begin at 6 p.m.

The event will include speakers on behalf of the artists, the awards tradition of gifting a handmade pin that reflects the honorees to the recipients, and words from MCA’s leadership.

The public, friends, and supporters of both honorees are welcome to register for and attend the presentation to celebrate the recipients.