February 28, 2024

Spring is in the air here at Hamilton, with the days getting longer and warm weather in the air. The first shoots of flowers are starting to break through the ground and with it are exciting new happenings at the Wellin as we prepare for the opening of René Treviño: Stab of Guilt.  

Treviño’s exhibition is sure to excite with a large variety of colors, materials, and adornments in the nearly 200 works of art that will be presented. Curator Alexander Jarman said about the exhibition, “Treviño's work highlights the complexity of the queer Mexican-American experience in this country. For the past 15 years, he has created multiple painting series and work in other media that celebrate difference while simultaneously erasing boundaries.” While I personally have only gotten a glimpse of the gold-fringed wall through the doors to the exhibition, I am excited to see the rest of the exhibition at the opening this coming Saturday, February 17, from 4-6pm. 

While us Hamilton students have only been back on campus for a month, the Wellin has already been busy with a number of events to help us start off the new semester. Our first Wellin Kids event was based on Ibrahim Said's Floating Vase 6. This was a fun event where kids got to recreate their own floating vase out of paper. I personally got to show Said’s artwork to over sixty kids as they came in. As a docent, it’s always fun to see what young visitors find the most intriguing. In this case it was the gold rabbit featured prominently on the center of the vase. I saw some of the kids copy this by drawing their favorite animals on their vases. 

We also had our first Wellin Open Studio of the new year, which was Gleeful Garlands. I got to attend this event and make my own garland with beads, fabric, and string. These crafty events are always a fun way for students to hang out with friends and make a fun decoration in the Wellin’s Archive Hall—a space most students don’t spend much time in. Walking around Darkside in the weeks since, I have seen a couple of these garlands providing a bit of color to dorm rooms. 

Looking into the next month, I’m getting excited for our next Wellin Kids event Brilliant Beading. This is sure to be another fun event for the kids, featuring Jeffrey Gibson’s A Very Easy Death. Identifying as half-Choctaw, half-Cherokee, Gibson’s work relates to Treviño’s as both artists deal with issues of gender, identity, and colonization. I’m also very excited for Artists in Conversation on March 6th, in which history professor Mackenzie Cooley will join Treviño for a discussion of his work. Us docents have already gotten a brief lecture from Professor Cooley on the history of the Mexica people, so I am excited to see what further conversation between these two will reveal about the multi-layered complexities of Treviño’s work.

Overall, the Wellin’s spring exhibition will create a platform for an exciting array of programing that is sure to interest visitors and invite meaningful, multidisciplinary conversations about who we are and the world we live in.