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Around Grand View’s campus, you can often find students painting, drawing, performing and practicing a variety of different forms of art. Rachel Trimble was one of those students. Trimble graduated in December of 2018 from GV, where she double majored in studio arts as well as theatre. 

Recently, Trimble received recognition at the Kennedy Center American College theater festival for the set displays she did for the play “Night Mother” here at GV and realized she wanted to continue her new passion for theatre.

 “Getting the set recognition was a complete surprise, I was not expecting it at all,” Trimble said. “I was not even planning to enter. I was an honorable mention, which was a little bit of a surprise, but it was awesome.” 

After that, the surprises kept coming. Trimble, along with two other GV alumni, had been selected as an Emerging Iowa Artist. 

An Emerging Iowa Artist is an unique opportunity for Iowa residents who are currently involved in an institution of higher education. This allows them to showcase their art at surrounding festivals.

In even more exciting news, she will be traveling the country alongside professional artists this summer. Not to mention, her artwork will be sold at the Des Moines Art Festival this summer from June 28-30. The festival is full of art, food, music and fun and usually draws around 200,000 people. It’s located in downtown Des Moines near the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park, and admission is free for attendees.

“It is my first time doing a festival set up, so I have a little bit of first time jitters going into it, but it’s mostly excitement,” Trimble said. “It will also mean that I need to continue to work on my artwork and build up more artwork to bring to the festival.” 

Trimble has been interested in art for as long as she can remember. She was taking art classes throughout high school, and by her senior year, she knew she wanted to make a career out of it. 

“High school, my senior year, was really when it cemented that I needed to stay in an art studio, even in college,” Trimble said. “I spent most of my days in the art studio. I would stay at school later than I needed to just to work on stuff in the studio.”

Trimble’s experience transitioning to GV was better than she would ever imagine. According to Trimble, the professors were great, which was a huge part of why she was so invested in what she did. Trimble said they would help her develop her own ideas and helped her figure out her path. 

Trimble originally only came to GV to study art; theatre was never anything she ever saw herself doing. However, she then ended up loving it to the point where she decided to add on a theatre major on top of her studio arts major.

“Theatre was kind of an accident,” Trimble said. “Randy, the technical director at the time, he was at a table, and he asked about me looking for work study and if I had any interest in theatre. The only experience I had prior to college was in middle school. He gave me a tour and asked me to let him know what I wanted to do. Soon after that, I started working there for work study, and then I started picking up classes. Then I fell in love with filling all of the sets and painting for the plays, and it stuck with me forever.”