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The creative life of Mina Choi ’26 at Muhlenberg College is defined by a steady pull between two ways of making: the visual and the textual. As a double major in art and English literature, she has centered her honors work on the poet William Carlos Williams, tracing the ways his writing engages with picture-making. This research led Choi to investigate the overlap of poetry and painting, and to interrogate ideas of localism — the emphasis on specific place — alongside what she describes as anti-aesthetic approaches that resist conventional ideas of beauty. Her background as a Jersey native informs much of this practice, making geography a core subject of her work.
Alongside studio and seminar time, Choi has taken on a range of campus roles that put her creative skills to practical use. She is the head visual arts editor of MUSES, a senior editor for the Muhlenberg Academic Review, and serves as social media chair for the Asian Students Association. Outside student organizations she has worked as a graphic designer for the Office of Communications and supported faculty research as a research assistant. These positions have allowed her to apply editorial judgment, visual composition and communication strategy to real projects while connecting her classroom interests to campus life.
Formative impulses and creative method
Choi traces her relationship to making back to childhood drawing sessions, when the blank page felt like a promise of possibility. That early enchantment translates now into a deliberate studio practice: sketching, layering paint, and testing text-image relationships. She treats the act of drawing as a kind of inquiry, one that often starts with ordinary material: roadside architecture, family snapshots, or fragments of local speech. Those quotidian elements become raw material for experiments that aim to capture a sense of place rather than produce polished spectacle. In describing this work she highlights the importance of process over finish, and the ways that constraint can generate surprising outcomes.
Academic projects and professional preparation
At Muhlenberg, Choi has combined hands-on studio art research with critical reading and writing. Her parallel theses—one in studio art, the other in literature—create a two-way conversation between image-making and textual analysis. Through these projects she has cultivated skills in archival study, visual composition and scholarly argumentation. In class and through campus employment she sharpened technical competencies such as layout, typographic decision-making and digital graphic design, while also gaining experience in teamwork, deadlines and public-facing publication. These practical abilities position her to translate creative work into multiple professional pathways after graduation.
Lessons learned
One of the lasting takeaways for Choi has been the value of a reliable support network. Between peers, mentors and faculty advisors she discovered a system of encouragement that made sustained creative work possible even during busy semesters. She emphasizes that maintaining a healthy work-life balance is an ongoing practice rather than a single achievement, and credits campus relationships with helping her navigate pressure and setbacks. For Choi, conversations with classmates and critiques from professors were as formative as her studio time; they provided context, accountability and emotional ballast.
Advice for emerging artists
Choi urges students to remain curious and to cross disciplinary borders in search of inspiration. Much of her own visual vocabulary has grown from reading poems, listening to music and attending plays. When confronted with a creative block she recommends reframing it as an invitation to look outward: to investigate different media, revisit unfamiliar authors or take walks in new neighborhoods. She also stresses patience—blocks often signal that a different kind of research or experience is needed, not that talent has failed. This approach privileges exploration and long-term growth over instant results.
Looking ahead
As graduation approaches, Choi plans to balance travel with paid work, intending to build experience outside academia before pursuing further study. She expects that graduate school will be a likely next step down the line, but for now she values the chance to regroup and gain new perspectives. That short-term intention—to work, see place beyond campus and refine practical skills—fits neatly with her longer-term aim of returning to scholarly and studio study refreshed. In the meantime, she is taking this transitional moment in stride, allowing space for both production and rest.
Across campus and in her art, Mina Choi’s trajectory is shaped by a commitment to place, an appetite for cross-genre experimentation and a practical orientation toward collaborative projects. Her journey at Muhlenberg illustrates how discipline, institutional opportunities and community support can combine to prepare an artist-scholar for multiple futures while keeping the work itself at the center of the experience.