Mary Mindiola, Indy artist, keeps plastic out of the sea with collage

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Mary Mindiola’s works of art are treasure hunts. Messages and little pictures hide within thousands of strips of brightly colored paper, peeking out at the viewer.

The electric blue water of the work that Mindiola, a 52-year-old Indianapolis resident, created for the Olympic Swim Trials conceals the Indy logo; Lucas Oil Stadium and the Eiteljorg Museum lurk among many other local images. Strips of paper create a vibrantly colored mosaic of a woman swimming while an underwater Eiffel Tower looms behind her.

Born in Venezuela, Mindiola emigrated to the United States at 18 with her mother. She attended the Kendall College of Art and Design in Michigan and moved to Indy more than 20 years to be closer to her sister. Once here, she co-founded the Indy Latina Artists.

As a young artist, she worked in multiple mediums, including textile art, crafts and painting.

She made the sudden switch to working exclusively in collage after a 2020 trip to the Cayman Islands where the litter-strewn beaches horrified her.

“Everything you can imagine was there,” Mindiola said. “It was horrible to see that. I had seen contaminated beaches like that in South America and other places, but not to that extreme.”

She walked along the beach, picking up garbage until she ran out of trash bags, but the beach was still covered with litter. When she, her husband and her daughter returned to Indianapolis, she could not forget the scene.

“I’m thinking, ‘This is what we’re leaving our kids,” Mindiola said. “The next generation is going to be the one having to clean this all up.”

So, she ditched her plastic-based acrylic paints and started using old magazines that otherwise would have been sent to the landfill in an effort to ensure a little less trash ends up in the ocean.

While Mindiola makes many portraits and landscapes, some of her works have abstract elements, some inspired by the artist Gustav Klimt. One piece depicts Mindiola and her husband, local Latin jazz musician Ezequiel Jimenez, embracing under a patterned quilt against yellow flowers. Mindiola’s curly hair bounces around her.

The couple love to travel together. On a road trip from Indianapolis to South Dakota, Mindiola collected magazines, postcards and brochures. While driving through the Black Hills, Mindiola saw a large, happy dog riding alongside his owner in a Jeep in front of them and had to take a picture.

More Indy artists: The Marilyn Rose Center’s art and car show

Mindiola later recreated the scene using her paper road trip memorabilia. The final piece is one of her favorites and one of the first she made with the cut and paste technique.

“We took 14 days just taking our time and seeing everything. Coolest trip I’ve ever done,” she said, admiring the piece with a smile.

Each of Mindiola’s pieces begins as a small sketch. If she wants a photographic reference, she cuts it out and attaches it directly to the paper. Then, she draws a square grid over it and her blank canvas, which helps her collage the image in the correct proportions.

Mindiola uses scissors to cut out her colored strips, tiny images and hidden messages. When customers commission portraits from her, she likes to have a list of things and images that are meaningful for them. That way she can tuck them around the strips of paper.

“It makes it super special because they can look at that and remember so many things, not just the face of the person or the pet,” Mindiola said.

Mindiola has no idea how long it takes her to make each piece.

“Do I start counting from when I was sleeping and the idea came to my head, or do you start from the sketch?” Mindiola said. “I don’t really do the timing thing. I just get up and start working.”Alex Haddon is a Pulliam Fellow. You can email her at AHaddon@gannett.com.

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