Welcoming Youth

We have had so much fun welcoming local youth educational programs to engage with our Welcome Feast project this summer. First, we hosted a community painting party to collaborate with Daniel Minter as he wrapped up production of the sculptures before installation day. Kids got a chance to learn about printmaking and see how an artist prepares for a big public project! Students from various youth art and writing camps have engaged with the project by responding to the sculptures with writing and art making. Students from the Telling Room, Oak Street Studios, Mayo Street Arts, Love Lab Studio and the Portland Museum of Art have all spent time contemplating concepts of community, what it means to be welcoming and how food and art can bring people together.

Young volunteers helping us print the sculptures before installation day.
Making sure all surfaces are covered!
Students at Mayo Street Arts working on art inspired by Daniel Minter’s Mother’s Garden. The students also collaborated with students from Love Lab Studio to make paper flowers as center pieces for the tables at our community dinners.
Students at Oak Street Studios making solar printed fabric to sew in to a table runner for the Welcome Feast community dinners
Students at the Telling Room writing camp responding to the sculptures.
The Portland Museum of Art’s Homer Fellows learning about public art and responding to the installation

Here is a poem written by Elizabeth Thomas, one of the Portland Museum of Art 2019 Homer Fellows:

Mother’s Garden: Daniel Minter

By Elizabeth Thomas

2019 Homer High School Fellow at the Portland Museum of Art / rising senior at Portland High School

Powerful winds dance among our silent bodies

Painted wood creates our faces

And our structure which stands

Now old in the sun

Has grown fond of her light

We turn our faces left

Perhaps searching

Perhaps our gaze is cast on something fixed 

Something which brings strength 

Matching the burnt umber wood which crouches under our painted tones of fire, yellow, and blue of the sky

We taste of fire and ash

Yet here we stand

Unburnt