THE WAY OUT

Joe Minter's African Village in America is filled with his sculpture sourced from scrap metal, flea markets, and street castaways.

BY CHRIS BYRNE

Born and based in Birmingham, Alabama, Joe Minter is the son of a caretaker of a white cemetery. Drawn to art at a young age, his African Village in America, conceived in 1980, pays homage to African American history through sculpture, from the time of the first arrival of enslaved Africans to the present.

Spurred by a work on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Chris Byrne interviews the artist here:

Chris Byrne (CB): The Nasher Sculpture Center recently installed Working Our Way Out of the Ghetto (2008) in the museum’s Foundations gallery, to accompany the current Mark di Suvero: Steel Like Paper exhibition— can you tell us about your piece?

Joe Minter (JM): You know, for us living in the inner city, one formula for us to work our way out was sports. We could take an old rim off of a bicycle tire and nail it to a wall or telegram post. A lot of us saw sports as a way out. There weren’t a lot of ways out.

You see the hands and the prison bars; the prison system was the way so many made it out. The chains and plow show the system of Jim Crow sharecropping. Our ghettos weren’t always in the city.

CB: Your sculptures are typically assembled with found materials...

JM: My materials come from flea markets and the street and anywhere people have used materials and don’t want them anymore. There is so much waste in Birmingham [Alabama]. They call it the magic city because of the steel, and that’s the material I work with. We had all the raw materials here to make steel. We were the industrial capital of the South.

CB: In 2016 you visited Dallas to participate in a panel discussion with your lifelong friend, the art patron Bill Arnett—what was your impression of the city?

JM: Dallas to me was a rich city because of the black gold. That was the first time I went to Dallas, and I didn’t think I’d ever make it there. But I remember I came across the old TV show called Dallas, but I don’t watch TV unless it’s the news or PBS. I didn’t pay attention to the show. I’m interested in current events. So I didn’t know much about Dallas. What I saw of Dallas seemed like a place I could get lost in. The people were nice. I was like a grain of lost sand there. A fish out of water. It was so much different than what I was used to.

CB: When did you first meet Bill?

JM: I met Bill in the mid-1990s.

CB: Prior to your meeting, Bill had been collecting art from ancient Mediterranean cultures, dynastic China, India, pre-Columbian Americas—in the late 1970s, he began to focus almost exclusively on sub-Saharan Africa, later establishing the Souls Grown Deep Foundation to secure the legacy of Black artists from the South and their cultural movement...

JM: It was just like the bird that fed Elijah. God had a mission for Elijah, one of his favorite prophets. So he set him under a tree. God sent the bird to nourish Elijah. God stopped sending the bird so that Elijah would begin his journey. I call Bill the Trailblazer. The Trailblazer who went all over the world studying all the different art forms only to come back home to his backyard, the Southeastern states, to discover, just like Elijah, his mission. And that mission was to come upon the African American culture and be able to understand the rich history that could be found in the rural and urban areas of the black belt. When he made it to me, he told me that he had just about completed his journey, and this would be his last effort to get the African American experience recognized in our home country. He went and banged on the doors of museums and everywhere trying to get them to pay attention to us. He was the Trailblazer. He was like Muhammad Ali. He took a beating from the top museums to the bottom. From the front doors to the side doors to the back doors. But like Ali, he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. He never gave up. Thank God for him. Without him I wouldn’t be here. Lonnie Holley wouldn’t be here. No Thornton Dial. No Gee’s Bend quilts.

CB: Can you provide an update about your yard environment in Birmingham entitled African Village in America?

JM: Out of my heart and out of my soul as being a father… Matt Arnett, one of Bill’s sons, has faithfully given all of his heart and soul to helping me preserve my African Village. A lot is still to come, but there are many people now working on this effort thanks to him. And hopefully this will be available for generations to come. I’m thankful for all who are involved.

CB: What upcoming projects can we look forward to?

JM: My friend Lonnie Holley created a show in Los Angeles and is showing my work. It’s also going to be in Miami at MoCA / North Miami in a show with Lonnie. I’ve been painting more. My thing about paint is I had to find another way to tell a story. And painting was that way. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A painting is worth a lot more words. We go through phases in our arts, and painting has always been a phase for me. P