Long before hundreds of elected officials, neighborhood leaders and artists gathered at the Marc Steel Company in Birmingham’s Titusville community for his first solo show in his hometown, artist Joe Minter patrolled the warehouse followed by photographers preparing a shoot for national publications.

The exhibit “Joe Minter Is Here,” which is free and open to the public through Oct. 20, features pieces such as “The Peacemaker” (1993), made of scrap metal and lawnmower blades; “The Many Uses of Chain” (1995), made of scrap metal and plow blade; and more than a dozen others.

Surveying his art, Minter said, “Miracles come to those that wait, to those that work themselves through a miracle to others.”

The exhibit “Joe Minter Is Here” is free and open to the public through Oct. 20. (Barnett Wright / The Birmingham Times)

While his art can be found in collections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., this never-before-exhibited work finally came to the city where Minter became an artist of renown.

His morning shoot was a precursor to a ceremony later in the day that celebrated Minter, 81, architect of “African Village in America,” where he has used discarded materials to chronicle the Black experience.

“Joe Minter is special,” said Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin. “We celebrate Joe Minter, and not just because of his creative genius. We celebrate him because he is authentically Birmingham. … His ‘African Village in America’ has become a staple (in his community), and it represents the Black experience.”

The mayor also spoke about how Minter chronicles that experience through art. “From being abducted from their ancestral homes in Africa to surviving Jim Crow to dealing with racism and oppression, our people have often felt like outsiders,” Woodfin said, “but Joe Minter knows with creativity, with his creativity, with perseverance you can rewrite your own story, you can build a new village from the ground up. You can find a home.”

Minter encouraged those in attendance to put it in their heart to come together because “after 400 years of hurting each other, we might not have it all together, but together we have it all.”

In addition to his collections at his Village, which go back decades, Minter has completed more than 400 paintings since 2022 as part of what he calls “the trail’s end of telling the story.”

He has never had a formal studio but instead paints in the open air of his driveway at home. Using mostly plywood boards and brushes he picked up at a local retailer, Minter carries forward a narrative and message in vivid color.

Producers of the exhibit want to introduce Minter’s story and work to new generations and highlight the importance of preserving cultural heritage, they said.

During the opening, Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley Jones read an original poem that she dedicated to Minter and later held a conversation about the artist with Dr. Imani Perry, Birmingham native, interdisciplinary scholar, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and MacArthur Fellow.

The celebration was produced by 1504, a Birmingham-based studio dedicated to telling transformative stories, and presented by Create Birmingham in partnership with Navigate Affordable Housing Partners.

The exhibit is free and open to the public through Oct. 20.

Thursday-Saturday: 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Sunday: 1 p.m.-5 p.m.

Location: Marc Steel Company, 600 Sixth Ave. South, Birmingham

To learn more, visit JoeMinterIsHere.com.