LEWISTON – Work by Portland artist Daniel Minter will be on display at Bates College through Feb. 28 in an exhibition for Black History Month.

“A Heavy Grace: Paintings and Sculpture” will open with a gallery reception featuring food and music from African-American and Brazilian culinary traditions at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4, in Chase Hall Gallery, Chase Hall, Campus Avenue, Bates College.

Minter is a painter, sculptor, illustrator and arts educator whose work is steeped in the context of African-American and African diaspora culture. The designer of the 2004 U.S. Postal Service’s Kwanzaa stamp, he is a noted illustrator of several children’s books.

“Minter collects the implements, the figures, the cultural tools of black experience in diaspora and gives them iconic status,” wrote Latin American historian and theologian Rachel Harding.

Harding said, “Many of the figures in Minter’s art are those of ordinary black life, especially of the mid-20th century rural South: hot combs and axes; straw brooms and jackknives; snakes, jars and crows; round women, big men and long-limbed trees. Through his skilled gaze and carefully honed instinct, Minter elicits deeper meanings from the mundane.”

The public is invited to attend the reception and exhibit free of charge. FMI: call 786-8376.