Last week, Trinity’s department of art held its annual MINI, an exhibition of artwork created by Trinity students in the Jim and Janet Dicke Art Building. The gallery allowed the students to display their works for the public and showcase them to other artists from San Antonio.
By replicating a real gallery setting, these art students had the opportunity to practice displaying art in museums. In addition, the MINI’s opening reception aimed to create an atmosphere that replicates a similar experience in art galleries outside of the Trinity bubble.
The opening reception took place on Thursday, Jan. 18. There, student artists networked with alumni, professionals and San Antonio-based artists. Trinity students, faculty and staff also attended the reception and partook in free food and drinks.
When it comes to the artists themselves, many of them spent months preparing for the MINI. Having spent months in preparation, the artists focused on conveying artistic vision well and that their work left an impact on gallery visitors.
Before attending Trinity, Pedro Ordoñez Acosta, senior finance and art double-major, practiced printmaking and abstract painting. Since joining the art department, he has experimented with surrealist painting and exploring hidden visual imagery in his work. Acosta described his artistic process and how he hopes it impacts the viewer of his art.
“I’m trying to make the viewer see things that they’re not really wanting to see, in a way, talking about taboo topics such as nudity, and trying to hide that in my paintings in a way where they don’t necessarily look like nudes,” Acosta said.
Jaeden Morgan, senior art major, worked with Jacob Iverson, senior art major who specializes in photography. Having done the MINI before, Morgan talked about his excitement to collaborate with Iverson. For this year’s MINI, Iverson and Morgan combined color editing and surrealist painting to create large prints of abstract color. Morgan described how their goal for this collaboration was to portray emotion in a visual medium.
“[Iverson]’s photography kind of tries to capture raw emotion as it’s experienced and how it manifests in us,” Morgan said. “And then my part of it kind of responds to that in the way we kind of intellectualize our feelings and kind of make something out of them or suppress them.”
Madeleine Albert, sophomore art and communication double-major, has been presenting art in galleries since middle school. For this year’s MINI, she presented many projects she has made over the years. Albert talked about her view of the MINI as an opportunity for a new project called “Untitled 11” that she is still working on: a combination of paint and sculpture.
“That’s my most recent one, and that’s the one I’m most proud of because it took over 800 hours.” Albert said, “By the time it’s actually finished, like the whole installation is finished, it would be freestanding, not on the wall.”
Because the MINI is free to the public, people outside of those networking in the art world can see and appreciate the students’ work. However, a prominent result of the MINI is the opportunity for networking that it brings to the artists.
The MINI is free to the public at the Micheal and Noemi Neidorff Art Gallery in the Dicke Art Building, and it will remain open until Feb. 10.
