LA Arts is proud to serve as one of seven community partners working in collaboration with Indigo Arts Alliance to host events for their 4th Annual Beautiful Blackbird Children’s Book Festival being held September 22-24. The festival celebrates the voices, artistry, and impact of children’s literature created by and featuring Black people. A goal of the festival is to build the home libraries of Black children with books that represent their lives and experiences.

To celebrate the festival, LA Arts will present the exhibit “A Blue: Daniel Minter and the Layered Narrative of Illustration” by artist Daniel Minter at LA Arts, 168 Lisbon Street, Lewiston, ME from September 22 – November 10. An opening reception for the artist will be held at LA Arts on Friday, September 22 from 5:30-7:00pm. These events are free and open to the public.

“A Blue: Daniel Minter and the Layered Narrative of Illustration” explores the children's book artistry of Coretta Scott King and Caldecott Honor winner, Daniel Minter. Using a visual vocabulary, Minter not only communicates the arc of the story, but expresses narratives within each layered illustration. Each image invites readers to explore the depth of the Black experience. Referencing the water, the crossing, the land, and desolation, Minter also tells readers how a people retained, remade, reimagined, and reclaimed themselves through their valorization to family, work, and love. The exhibit “A Blue: Daniel Minter and the Layered Narrative of Illustration” was curated by Kirsten Cappy of I'm Your Neighbor Books.