Indigo Arts Alliance

Indigo Arts Alliance Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Indigo Arts Alliance, Nonprofit Organization, 60 Cove Street, Portland, ME.

Indigo Arts Alliance, located in Portland, Maine is a non-profit organization committed to the artistic development of people of African descent and is a place where freedom of self-expression and personal transformation is exchanged.

06/19/2026

In honor of Juneteenth, we’re sharing a special episode of Voices + Visions: The Podcast featuring Stephen Hamilton ’25 Mentorship AiR. 🎙️ In this episode, he discusses the enduring relationships between material culture, memory, and lineage, bridging contemporary Black American experiences those of their African ancestors. This series spotlights the rich intersections, perspectives, and experiences of Indigo Arts Alliance’s alumni Artists-in-Residence (AiRs).

Stephen Hamilton is a mixed-media artist, arts educator whose work blends figurative painting and drawing with resist dyeing, weaving, and woodcarving. His practice explores elements of Black American identity through time and space, using traditional techniques and materials native to West Africa to reclaim ancestral knowledge dissociated from Africans in the Americas, during the transatlantic slave trade. By examining the diverse philosophies and aesthetics shared throughout the African diaspora, Hamilton’s work magnifies the complexity and richness of Black artistic expression.

During his residency with us in 2025, Hamilton worked extensively with natural dyes and textiles. Tune in to WMPG FM 90.9 FM at 1 PM EST to listen in full or visit the link in our bio. 🎧
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Voices and Visions: The Podcast airs every other month on WMPG FM 90.9 FM. All episodes can be heard on indigoartsalliance.me/voices-and-visions, wmpg.org, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms. Voices + Visions: The Podcast is produced by Florence S. Edwards, DDS.

Introducing our newest David C. Driskell Fellow: Sascha Rose! 🎉 ⁠Rose is a first-generation Haitian-American musician an...
06/18/2026

Introducing our newest David C. Driskell Fellow: Sascha Rose! 🎉 ⁠

Rose is a first-generation Haitian-American musician and filmmaker who grew up in Maine. Her Haitian roots have long inspired her work, as she tells stories of colonial resistance, liberation, and connection to the divine and natural world through music and film. As she expands her musical composition she is exploring the intersections of electronic production and Black folk music. Stay tuned for an upcoming album release event!

Join us in giving Rose a warm Indigo welcome! 💙 She’s settled into our Black Seed Studio, and will be calling it home for the next six months. We look forward to supporting her creative process as it continues to deepen during the course of her fellowship.

Visit the link in our bio to learn more about her practice. 🔗

What a weekend! We’re still feeling the energy from the incredible workshops led by our June Mentorship Artists-in-Resid...
06/15/2026

What a weekend! We’re still feeling the energy from the incredible workshops led by our June Mentorship Artists-in-Residence pairing, Maya Tihtiyas Attean (local) and Cinthya Santos-Briones (national).

Thank you to everyone joined us. There was no shortage of inspiration between plant identification with Bomazeen Land Trust, collaborative cyanotypes, and being the inaugural site for a national community embroidery project. Swipe through to see some of our favorite moments. ✨

Hosting Briones and Attean over this past month has been a gift. Their warmth, fierce compassion, and fabulous creative energy transformed our studio in countless ways. While their time with us has come to an end and we will miss them dearly, we know our paths will cross again. We can’t wait to see all the brilliance they continue to bring into the world. As always, it is an honor to have them as part of our IAA constellation. 💙
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Images: 1. Cinthya Santos-Briones’ guiding participants through the 101’s embroidery during her workshop at Indigo Arts Alliance. 2. Briones’ posing for a photo while participants practice their embroidery. 3. Maya Tihtiyas Attean leading participants through a nature walk on the grounds of the Bomazeen Land Trust. 4. Participants working on arranging the composition of their cyanotypes. 5. The final product of a group cyanotype project.

06/15/2026

Last summer, Indigo Arts Alliance’s Co-founder and Artist Director Daniel Minter unveiled “In the Voice of Trees,” a site-specific installation commissioned for Deconstructing the Boundaries: Tending to Communities, the final symposium in our multi-year partnership with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens centering Black, Brown, and Indigenous relationships with the land.

Both monumental and intimate,“ In the Voice of Trees” continues Minters exploration of trees as vessels of resilience, healing, and interconnectedness. Symbolizing the African proverb, “Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable,” the sculpture features sixteen red pine trunks stripped of their branches and bound together, as a meditation on unity and endurance.

Draped across the sculpture incorporates numerous hand formed clay beads that were made by participants in 20 workshops held in collaboration with community partners across the state of Maine. The beads represent the prayers each maker had for the next seven generations. The trunks, standing together, are both guardians of memory and pillars for the future.

You can experience “In the Voice of Trees” on the grounds of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, now open to the public for their summer season. To learn more the work and deconstructing the boundaries, visit: https://indigoartsalliance.me/deconstructing-the-boundaries/
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Join us on Friday, June 26 at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens for a conversation and interactive walk with June Mini Mentorship AiR Folayemi Wilson ’19 and plant biologist Dr. Beronda Montgomery. Together, we’ll explore the intelligence, interconnectedness, and wisdom of trees, and consider how forests can serve as allies in Black liberation. Visit the link in our bio to learn more.

For the past few weeks, our June Mentorship AiRs pairing, Maya Tihtiyas Attean (local) and Cinthya Santos-Briones (natio...
06/09/2026

For the past few weeks, our June Mentorship AiRs pairing, Maya Tihtiyas Attean (local) and Cinthya Santos-Briones (national), have been deepening their creative research as they settle into the studio. ✨ Swipe through for a behind the scenes look at what they’ve been up to.

Come learn about the ideas shaping their time in residence, join us for their two public engagement events this weekend:

June 13 | 10 AM EST | Embodied Threads
📍Indigo Arts Alliance
Inspired Chilean arpilleras and the textile traditions of protest developed across Latin America, Cinthya Santos-Briones will guide participants through an embroidery workshop centering textiles as a space for collective memory, mourning, solidarity, and community testimony.

June 14 | 10:30 AM EST | Exploring our Shared Landscape
📍Bomazeen Land Trust
Presented in partnership with Bomazeen Land Trust, Maya Tihtiyas Attean will lead a guided foraging walk and a cyanotype workshop to explore how Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities cultivate enduring relationships with the land through practices of collective stewardship and care.

Free and open to the public, visit the link in our bio to register. 🔗
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Images: 1. Cinthya Santos-Briones sharing her work and creative process with visitors during a studio tour. 2. An embroidery sample for Briones’ upcoming workshop. 3. Maya Tihtiyas Attean mapping out their upcoming photography publication in the studio. 4. A closer look at the materials and inspirations on Attean’s studio table. 5 Attean and Briones with our o-founder and Artistic Director Daniel Minter, during a visit to his studio.

06/07/2026

In their poetry, Maya Williams, 2025 Mentorship AiR, brings vulnerability, honesty, and care to subjects that are often difficult to name. Their work moves through su***de awareness, mental health, faith, grief, and healing, just to name a few, weaving these themes into language that is both tender and unflinching.

A religious Black multiracial nonbinary su***de survivor, Williams writes from a place of lived experience and deep reflection. Their poetry offers a compassionate yet acute lens on how these realities shape Black and Brown communities, and what it means to survive while still seeking connection, meaning, and care.

Williams is currently a 2026 Ashley Bryan Fellow with the Main Writers and Publishers Alliance and previously served as the seventh Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine from July 2021 to July 2024. Learn more about their work and purchase their most recent chapbook, Feminine Morbidity, through the following link: https://indigoartsalliance.me/artists/maya-williams/
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At Indigo Arts Alliance, we believe archives are living records of who we are, what we value, and whose stories endure. By preserving the work of our alumni through artist profile videos like Maya’s, we are building a more complete record of the contemporary cultural landscape with Black and Brown artists at the center. Support the Archive today and learn more at https://indigoartsalliance.me/donate/

Join the team! Indigo Arts Alliance is hiring a Development Director to help us shape the future of our organization by ...
06/06/2026

Join the team! Indigo Arts Alliance is hiring a Development Director to help us shape the future of our organization by implementing and supporting fundraising strategy that sustains our mission to support Black and Brown artists.

This role will lead fundraising initiatives that support more than 85+ artists, major public programs, annual symposiums, the Beautiful Blackbird Children’s Book Festival, and partnerships with organizations across the country. We are looking for someone who will design and lead comprehensive fundraising strategy, including grants, major gifts, and individual giving, to strengthen long-term sustainability for our Black-led arts organization.

The Development Director will continue to build relationships with donors, foundations, and corporate partners committed to racial equity, while representing IAA within philanthropic spaces in partnership with our Executive Director and Board.

Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. If this sounds like you, or someone you know, visit the link in our bio to learn more and apply. 🔗

06/03/2026

Indigo Arts Alliance mourns the passing of Dr. Rachel Elizabeth Harding, our beloved friend, mentor, collaborator, and 2025 Mentorship Artist in Residence. Visit the following link to learn more about Harding’s life and legacy: https://tr.ee/BirKB6S612 🔗

A luminous author, poet, educator, and historian, Harding touched countless lives through her scholarship, compassion, and dedication to social justice. We extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and loved ones.

Harding was far more than a member of our community. She was one of the people who helped imagine Indigo Arts Alliance into being. From our earliest days, when the organization existed only as a vision, she offered her insight, encouragement, and steadfast belief in what this space could become.

Over the years, Harding helped develop The Welcome Table, our first signature program, contributed her writing to The Record, our digital text based archive, served on our Advisory Circle, and generously shared her gifts with our artists, staff, and broader community. Earlier this year, she played an integral role in organizing Art in the Wake II: Repairing, Healing, and Memory and the accompanying travel seminar in Brazil, helping create meaningful spaces for dialogue, reflection, and connection.

As Harding’s family beautifully expressed, “whether on the page or in community, she showed that scholarship, creativity, and advocacy were never separate callings, but one integrated practice of the beloved community, love made visible.”

While we grieve this tremendous loss, we trust that Harding now rests among the ancestors whose guidance continues to light our path. Our organization remains committed to honoring her legacy by carrying forward the values she embodied: love, curiosity, courage, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to human dignity.
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In lieu of flowers, her family requests that memorial donations be made to Cave Canem, Indigo Arts Alliance, The Black Star Project, and/or The Veterans of Hope Project —an initiative founded by her parents, late civil rights icons Dr. Vincent Harding and Rosemarie Freeney-Harding, to preserve the intersection of religion, culture, and democratic social movements.

Summer is taking shape at Indigo Arts Alliance, and so is a month full of opportunities to learn, create, and connect in...
06/02/2026

Summer is taking shape at Indigo Arts Alliance, and so is a month full of opportunities to learn, create, and connect in-person with our Artists in Residence (AiRs)! Swipe through for June events, happening in and around IAA. Free and open to all, visit https://indigoartsalliance.me/event-schedule/ to register and learn more.
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June 13 | 10 AM EST | Embodied Threads
📍Indigo Arts Alliance
Led by Cinthya Santos-Briones, our national June Mentorship AiR, this workshop invites participants to embroider onto fabric phrases drawn from news reports and journalistic archives documenting the current political climate surrounding migration in the United States. Inspired by Chilean arpilleras and textile traditions of protest developed across Latin America, the workshop approaches textiles as a space for collective memory, mourning, solidarity, and community testimony.

June 14 | 10:30 AM EST | Exploring our Shared Landscape
📍Bomazeen Land Trust
Discover new ways of relating to the natural world with Maya Tihtiyas Attean, our local June Mentorship AiR. Presented in partnership with Bomazeen Land Trust. Through foraging, a guided walk, and a cyanotype workshop, participants will learn more about how Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities maintain deep spiritual, material and emotional relationships with the land and practice collective stewardship.

June 26 | 5 PM EST | Honoring the Wisdom of Trees
📍Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Folayemi Wilson ’19, our June Mini-Mentorship AiR, joins renowned plant biologist Dr. Beronda Montgomery for an enriching discussion on the intelligence, interconnectedness, and wisdom of trees, and how the forest acts as an ally in Black liberation. Presented in partnership with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, an accompanying guided walk through the gardens will connect these themes to specific trees and elements of the landscape in the context of Black freedom and memory.

Indigo Arts Alliance is proud to announce our 2026-2027 David C. Driskell Fellowship Cohort! Named in honor of our estee...
05/21/2026

Indigo Arts Alliance is proud to announce our 2026-2027 David C. Driskell Fellowship Cohort! Named in honor of our esteemed Elder Advisor, David C. Driskell, this fellowship provides time and space for Maine-based/rooted Black and Brown artists to focus on creative production with 6 months rent-free studio space in our Black Seed Studio.

✨Sascha Rose will be in fellowship from June 1 - November 13, 2026. Rose is a first-generation Haitian-American musician and filmmaker who grew up in Maine. Her Haitian roots have long inspired her work, as she tells stories of colonial resistance, liberation, and connection to the divine and natural world through music and film. As she expands her musical practice to include drum machines and loop pedals, she is exploring the intersections of electronic production and Black folk music.

✨Mia Muntu will be in fellowship from January 18 - June 25, 2027. Muntu is a dancer and choreographer based in Portland, Maine. Originally from Northern Virginia, she danced competitively from a young age and was recently awarded a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts for a new solo creation set to debut in early 2026. Alongside maintaining an independent teaching practice, she is deeply committed to inspiring future generations of dancers.

✨ Michael Kebede will be in fellowship from July 5 - December 17, 2027. Raised in Ethiopia, Kebede draws from American banjo traditions and East African music to create a resonant link between Black life in the Western hemisphere and the African continent. He has performed folk interpretations and original instrumental compositions in venues ranging from music halls carceral facilities, and churches, to farmers’ markets, porches, and street corners across Maine.

Please join us in congratulating these remarkable artists! 💙 Visit the following link to read the full announcement and learn more: https://tr.ee/A94dZRE6_j

Address

60 Cove Street
Portland, ME
04101

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 5pm
Tuesday 10am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 5pm
Thursday 10am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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