Joe Minter: Yard Art, Folk Art at Smithfield Branch Library

A Salute to Mr. Otis Jones, 2015

Joe Wade Minter Sr., born March 28, 1943, is a retired construction worker and a folk artist who has a half acre art garden titled “African Village," located on a vacant lot adjacent to his home at 912 Nassau Street near Shadow Lawn Memorial Park in the Woodland Park neighborhood. Over the years Minter has graciously donated his unique masterpieces to be displayed at Smithfield Branch Library. His most recent dotation is a design saluting Mr. Otis Jones, noted library patron and community activist.

Buffalo, 1998

Listed below are resources that capture the life and work of the artist:

Books
Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South edited by Paul Arnett, William Arnett

History Refused to Die: The Enduring Legacy of African American Art in Alabama by Horace Randall Williams, Karen Wilkin, Sharon Holland

Articles
"African Village in America," RoadsideAmerica.com, September 10, 2015
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/24361

Michael Tortorello, "Scrap-Iron Elegy," New York Times, April 24, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/garden/joe-minters-african-village-in-america.html

Facebook
Joe Minter's African Village in America

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsWiizTlHtM

Tribute to Civil Rights, 2012

Lost African Warrior, 1998

Yolanda Hardy
Smithfield Branch Library