RISD Continuing Education is excited to continue its online adult art and design learning. This fall, students from around the world can engage in fully asynchronous courses, which offer opportunities to explore new areas of interest, cultivate their creative potential, or develop new skills. For students interested in taking their learning to the next level, RISD CE now offers seven fully online certificate programs for adults:

• Animation
• Graphic Design
• Interactive Design
• Natural Science Illustration
• Painting Studies
• Photography
• Residential Interior Design

RISD CE Certificate Programs are designed to facilitate personal and professional development by engaging students in sustained exploration and learning in specific creative disciplines. These non-credit online certificates equip students with skills, confidence, proficiency, and real-world experience to accelerate creative lives and work. With no entry requirements, students with any background can learn with motivated peers to develop their portfolio, broaden existing skills, explore a new career path or life pursuit, or start their own business and build the network that will help them do it.

Notably, RISD CE certificate programs make it possible for busy adult students to explore a new career direction while continuing to work in their current field, with more flexibility and affordability than a degree, and a focus on building marketable skills and a portfolio. Students complete their coursework at their own pace to fit into their unique life and schedule.

The newly updated Residential Interior Design certificate has become one of the most popular, giving motivated students with a variety of backgrounds the knowledge and skills to get started in a growing professional field. The program was recently redesigned to address the interests and pursuits of students, focusing on residential spaces like kitchens, baths, and outdoor living areas, while ensuring that coursework is streamlined and that the technology utilized aligns with industry standards. The outcome? Students from all over have enrolled to achieve their unique interior design goals, from taking on projects in their own homes to strengthening skills and marketability in related fields like theater set design.

There is still time to get started in a course or certificate program this fall! Courses begin October 30. Online courses for teen students are also available, including the year-round intensive Advanced Program Online.

To learn more, visit ce.risd.edu.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article RISD Continuing Education Unlocks Your Creative Potential With 7 Online Certificates appeared first on Colossal.

The intersection of blockchain technology and fine art has been a revolutionary moment in the modern art world. One platform, in particular, is not only driving this revolution but potentially redefining it entirely. That platform is Domini.art ($DOMI), and it is crafting an ecosystem that could make millionaires out of art enthusiasts and financial wizards alike.

Not only is Domini.art featuring some of the most popular NFTs, but it’s also creating opportunities for artists to monetize their works in unprecedented ways. As more investors are seeking altcoins to buy, Domini.art’s native token ($DOMI) is becoming increasingly attractive for its utility and growth potential. It’s not just an art platform; it’s a financial innovation that has the potential to disrupt and democratize the world of art investment.

Revolutionizing the art market

When art meets finance in an elegant, innovative form, you get Domini.art. This is not just another NFT platform; it’s a marketplace that unifies high-end blue-chip art with the liquidity and transparency that blockchain technology offers. Domini.art tokenizes each artwork as a unique NFT, offering not only an immutable ownership record but also democratizing the very landscape of art investment.

Imagine you have always been captivated by iconic artists like Van Gogh or Picasso, but acquiring even a single piece from these legends has been a far-off dream, relegated to millionaires and institutions. Domini.art shatters this exclusivity by offering fractional ownership. This fractionalization means you can own a slice of these prestigious artworks, without owning the whole piece, thus opening up avenues for a much wider audience to invest in art. You’re not just buying pixels on a screen; you’re buying a real share of a physical artwork, securely stored and insured.

Blockchain transparency is at the core of this platform, ensuring that each artwork and ownership share is public, immutable, and secure. The Domini.art platform guarantees this by incorporating cutting-edge encryption protocols, multi-factor authentication, and regular security audits.

While Domini.art offers an impressive collection of traditional art pieces, it’s worth noting that the platform also presents opportunities for investing in digital art and NFTs by up-and-coming artists. For those looking for the best altcoins to invest in, Domini.art has its native token that can be used for transactions, providing additional benefits such as lower fees and exclusive access to special events.

This creates a complete ecosystem around art investment, where both traditional and digital forms of art are tokenized and made accessible. By diversifying the portfolio of art offerings, Domini.art is not just revolutionizing how we think about art investment; it’s also setting the stage for how blockchain technology can make ownership more equitable and transparent across various asset classes.

Domini.art ($DOMI)

If you’re scoping out the top altcoins to watch, $DOMI should be on your radar. Here’s why: The art investment space offers a unique portfolio diversification opportunity, historically yielding an average return of 7.6%. Domini.art is not merely offering an investment; it’s offering a diversified, liquid asset that’s backed by real-world art.

The tokenomics of $DOMI are also designed to incentivize long-term holding and community growth. With a total supply of 1 billion and 65% allocated to the public, $DOMI aims to be accessible. Moreover, it has a successful presale currently in Stage 1, where $DOMI is priced at $0.002625 USD. Already, over 36 million $DOMI have been sold, making up 42.4% of the tokens available at this stage.

Domini.art also offers a secondary market where fractionalized art shares can be traded, ensuring liquidity for your investments. The marketplace is just another layer of the platform’s commitment to creating an investment-friendly environment.

Conclusion

So, what makes Domini.art a game-changer in both the art world and the crypto space? It’s the platform’s unique approach to democratizing art investment while offering a robust, transparent, and secure trading environment. With its intricate blend of art, blockchain, and financial savvy, Domini.art is pioneering a movement that is hard to ignore.

If you’re pondering over which altcoins to buy or the most popular NFTs, don’t overlook Domini.art. It’s not just another token; it’s a revolutionary shift in how we perceive art and investments. As it gains traction, those fractional shares of a Van Gogh or a Picasso might just be the investment that takes you from art enthusiast to art millionaire.

Learn more about $DOMI here:

Visit Domini.art Presale | Join the Community

CINCINNATI — Your kid’s art could be worth something. A new program is teaching teens and young adults how to make a profit through their own works of art and the program will be on the move. 

Armenta Ashshakir already knows what she wants her career to be, and she’s still in high school.

“I’m a photographer so I can say that’s my goal, but fashion and design is definitely a part of me,” said Ashshakir.

What she doesn’t know yet is how to make money through her work.

“I wanna tie my photography in with my marketing ’cause I feel like it can go hand in hand,” said Ashshakir.

That’s why Michael Taylor is here too. 

“I’ve been doing art as long as I can remember,” said Taylor.

He’s been helping to teach teens how to add more to their portfolio with art classes. He’s also taking classes himself on how to make a profit from creative artwork.

“We practice a lot of different styles in a lot of different mediums, but with that, we also try to aim to make our own pieces that will be able to be marketable, we’ll be able to make reprints and sell them at other events,” said Taylor. 

It’s all happening as a part of a program through ROMAC, the Robert O’Neal Multicultural Arts Center, in Cincinnati. It’s housed at the Lincoln Recreational Center on the West end at least for now.

The future of the program is right across the street at the old Regal Theater.

Toilynn O’Neal-Turner, the CEO and founding director of the ROMAC, says that’s where they’re moving. It’s the reason she says programming started when fundraising began to restore the old theater.

“We could’ve waited and tried to raise money just for the building, but there’s a need here, there’s young people that wanna be engaged, there’s a thirst of being part of something that is hopeful and inspirational and we couldn’t wait to do it,” said O’Neal-Turner.

She says by 2025, this program will be in the remodeled space with even more kids planning for a future through the arts.

“It’s been an amazing journey so far, being with the ROMAC, and I look forward to every second of it,” said Taylor.

Organizers are still raising money for the remodel of the old Regal Theater. For more information, click here.

Plein Air 2023 will bring 50 artists from around the country to Steamboat Springs to paint the splendor of the Yampa Valley “en plein air” or “outside on the spot.”

Steamboat Art Museum’s annual weeklong Plein Air event kicks off Friday and runs through Sept. 29, bringing artists to the area to paint on location.

This year marks the 12th annual Plein Air event and, as always, promises to showcase Steamboat, the surrounding community and the landscape through the unique light of the artists’ eyes, including the historic towns, ranches and mountain vistas of Routt County.

This event is popular among plein air artists because of Steamboat’s hospitality and breathtaking scenery, and once again this year, there will be many unique events providing opportunities to get to know the artists and purchase artwork.

Three sales events will provide an opportunity to add to or start an art collection with paintings of the Yampa Valley created by the artists. The week starts with the Quick Draw at the Main Street Steamboat Farmers Market downtown along the Yampa River.

SAM and the farmers market are partnering to add an event to the last market of the year in which people can watch the artists create a painting in only two hours. Paintings will go on sale in the afternoon on Yampa Street between Seventh and Eighth streets. 

Wednesday’s Sunset Reception presents a chance to meet the artists with their work of the day at the Alpine Mountain Ranch and Club. With easels set up around the lake with their favorite painting of the day, patrons will have time to meet and talk to the artists, learn more about their work and enjoy a buffet.

Friday’s opening reception and awards event is the exhibition opening with more than 250 paintings created during the week. More than $8,000 in awards will be presented to artists in Professional and Open Categories, as well as special Awards of Excellence presented to artists by select nonprofit organizations for works that exemplify their mission. 

This year’s event will be judged by Kathleen Hudson, an award-winning and nationally represented Colorado artist who is a Signature member of Plein Air Painters of America and the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, and a member of Oil Painters of America and the California Art Club. Hudson will present an entertaining evening of career and technique insights at 5 p.m. Sept. 28.

SAM has partnered with nonprofits such as Main Street Steamboat and the Main Street Steamboat Farmers Market, Historic Routt County, Friends of the Yampa, Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust and the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp to allow artists to access a selection of their locations and properties. Each organization is sponsoring an Award of Excellence, which will be given to the artist whose painting best reflects the nonprofit’s mission and the image will be available for use by the organization for marketing purposes.

According to organizer, these collaborations help direct artists to safe and interesting painting locations, while also creating cross-promotional opportunities with SAM and showing that art can reach across many unrelated sectors.

In turn, the Plein Air artists and patrons can become more aware of the region’s rich historical legacy, the impacts of the ranching and agricultural sector, and the importance of the Yampa River and its tributaries, all while supporting the valley and community.

The successful Menart Fair that just concluded in Parise is showing how artists from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are leading the conversation, while also opening up new perspectives in the European cultural arena.

Sometimes we think of art fairs as places where art collectors just go and buy, whereas museums and biennales are where the “real art” happens. However, in an art system ruled by the market, fairs extend well beyond a mere buy-and-sell business. Just like auctions, they are the places telling us where art is going, while also exerting a real cultural influence.

“We’ve noticed recently that a growing number of French and European galleries are including artists from the Middle East,” explained Laure d’Hauteville, founder of the Menart Fair, which has just run its fourth edition in Paris from 15 to 17 September. “Institutions are preparing exhibitions on artists from the Middle East and North Africa for 2024.”

The fair successfully managed to leverage the growing interest in modern and contemporary art from the MENA region in Europe and was dedicated to artists from the Levant, Arab-Persian Gulf and North Africa. More than 31 galleries from 11 countries were presented at the Palais d’Iéna, under the artistic direction of Joanna Chevalier.

In this sense, walking among the elegant grey and dust-coloured columns of the 1939 palais, which for a weekend was filled with vivacious and bright paintings, can feel almost metaphorical. The fascinating Parisian building by architect Auguste Perret represents the old guard. The eye-catching canvases, bold installations, political sculptures, surreal ceramics and even dances and performances from the MENA region represented the new values that are coming to the heart of Europe.

“Thanks to Menart Fair, the public and art professionals had the chance to discover new talents and observe the evolution of those they know,” said d’Hauteville. “A new market in Europe is taking shape.”

Art lovers today need to be keenly aware of what’s going on in this part of the world

The truth is that art lovers today need to be keenly aware of what’s going on in this part of the world, marked by incredible cultural diversity and unconventional visual languages. Amidst the work of these artists, they could find new lines of research that look at historical, social and political narratives as well as dominant representations with a different eye. This is much needed in the heart of Europe at the moment, in order to build a nurturing line of communication, based not only on a theoretical but also an emotional understanding.

Born in Dusseldorf, the Paris-based d’Hauteville is a former journalist who specialised in culture between France and the Middle East. She has had the opportunity to familiarise herself with the art scene since 1991, when she became passionate about arts from the MENA region.

Determined to promote dialogue between the Middle East and the West, she founded her first art fair, “Artuel”, in Beirut in 1998, which she directed and curated until 2005. “This was the first international modern and contemporary art fair in the region,” she told me.

Ahmed Farid, Untitled, 2019, Oil and gold leaf on canvas, 120 x100 cm

Adonis, Untitled, Print on paper, 68x51cm

Ghassan Zard, Untitled from On a Shore series, 2021, Bronze, 26cm x 34cm x 28cm

Morteza Khosravi, Untitled, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 150x190cm

She then proceeded to create and direct a number of fairs: JABAL, a fair dedicated to the discovery and recognition of young emerging artists in Lebanon; the Artparis-Abu Dhabi Fair; the Beirut Art Fair; and the 2014 Singapore Art Fair.

In 2021, she finally conceived and developed the Menart in Paris, the first fair dedicated to galleries presenting artists from the Middle East and North Africa, which she then succeeded in expanding to other European capitals, including Brussels.

In line with today’s investments in art, it has not been not surprising to find galleries from the three Gulf countries that are today massively attracting art audiences, leveraging the soft power of art: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Artistically, we know these countries mostly for big-scale governmental projects, so it’s very interesting to get acquainted with the parallel discourse that the private galleries are bringing forward.

However, the most interesting gallery at Menart which operates heavily in the Gulf is one that doesn’t have a physical space quite yet. It is called Hunna, and it has been mentioned several times here on Middle East Monitor, as an example of a space that is adding interesting layers of complexity to the narrative of the Arabian Peninsula in Europe.

Founded in 2021 by French researcher and curator Océane Sailly, Hunna represents exclusively women artists based in the Gulf, and it is ultra-contemporary in its approach to the region. The artists in Hunna’s roster look at matriarchal lines, power dynamics, the woman’s body and its representation, as well as the history of the Arabian Peninsula.

READ: Rewriting history and building community: Abu Dhabi in the Emirati art environment

Among the works Sailly had in her booth in Paris were surreal paintings and sculptures by Alymamah Rashed. She was inspired to create these images of slugs, snails and larvae by her research on the mythology, objecthood, artefacts and lost fragments of Failaka Island in Kuwait, a fascinating post-apocalyptic place marked by a strange history.

The real protagonists of this edition of Menart, though, were Lebanese artists, accounting for one-third of the galleries at the fair. “Despite the economic crisis in Lebanon, the art market demand for Lebanese artists is still very strong,” d’Hauteville pointed out. Given her strong ties with Lebanon, she is determined to keep offering support and visibility to a country which is still struggling. “Like the Menart Fair which we exported from Lebanon to Europe, many artists presented at this edition are originally from one country, grew up in a second country, and work or reside today in a third country. These personal trajectories are reflected in artistic productions that are at the crossroads between East and West.”

Indeed, several artists present at the fair are part of what we can call “third culture artists”. These are artists of a mixed background who feel a deep sense of belonging to the MENA region and explore these roots in their art.

This is certainly the case with designer Nada Debs at the Parisian Galerie BSL who calls her style “East and East”. Her unique practice blends cultural languages that at first seem incompatible: the minimalist refinement of Japan (the Far East) and the ornamentation of the Middle East. Born in Beirut to Lebanese parents, she grew up in Japan and now works between Beirut and Dubai. She wishes to preserve the know-how of the eastern regions while reinventing them, almost as an act of rebellion.

At Menart she presented some pieces from the series “Stitched Horizons”, whereby embroidery meets furniture design. The series includes five pebble chairs, decorated with embroidery on the back. This is the result of a collaboration with an association of female refugees in Lebanon. The materials Nada chooses all tell a tactile story. For her, the human hand is a voice, and the artisan is a storyteller.

Nayla Tabet, Detail “Tea Ceremony”, Mixed media, metal wire, paper, 35 x 25 x H25 cm

Nayla Romanos Iliya, Hobb, 2017,Bronze, concrete, mirrored stainless steel, 38x19x19 cm

Reem R., “Last Night”, 2023, Oil on canvas

Houda Terjuman, We will likely become aliferous, 2023, Oil and acrylic on canvas , 125x95cm

Hela Ammar, Henda II, 2018, digital photography, 60×65 cm, in Limited edition of 7

Another significant example of a third culture artist who was very much sought-after at the fair is Lien Hoang-Xuan, who is of Vietnamese-Tunisian origins. Her works illustrate this multitude of references. She creates imaginary cities inspired by Saigon, Tunis and Beirut. She uses many references from classic lyric literature or love songs and sweet pop-culture clips, which she combines with superstitious symbols and folkloric visual motifs.

She never fails to present gold figures alongside snippets of writing. Her work at the booth of the gallery Revie Projects almost looks like the pages from a comic book belonging to King Midas. The artist, who currently lives and works between Paris and Beirut, says that her work “questions elegiac themes, such as the lament of love, nostalgia through sculpture, painting and video.”

Menart was a successful fair. According to the organisers, it welcomed 5,727 visitors over four days, and out of the 230 works exhibited, 128 were sold. The idea was to have an all-encompassing experience that would involve not only different art forms, but also other museums scattered around the city, including the work of Lebanese sculptor Samar Moeghabael at the Musee de l’Homme.

While Middle Eastern and North African countries are today seeing a variety of hyper-developed and multi-layered art scenes, it’s clearly still very important for them to be in Paris, in the heart of the art establishment. This is not only to have their paintings hanging in Parisian homes, but also to expand the conversation around the Arab world, turn over the paradigm of the perceived clash of cultures, and introduce new elements of beauty and curiosity to the cultural conversation in Europe.

Photographer Alberto Seveso (previously) continues his high-speed captures of ink as it disperses in water, this time inspired by marine organisms. As its name suggests, The Reef is a collection that spotlights vivid plumes in shades of greens, pinks, and oranges digitally altered to evoke coral-like forms. The series was born out of a holiday spent in a remote, largely uninhabited region in the Andaman Sea, where Seveso encountered a lush jungle and wide, sandy beaches. He shares:

The island’s fauna is rich with exotic species. It’s not uncommon to spot colorful hornbills, charming spectacled langur monkeys, and elusive flying lemurs. However, it was within its coral reef that I became utterly captivated…I was mesmerized by the beauty and diversity of shapes and colours—a world teeming with life, a glimpse of rare beauty constantly threatened by human activities.

To create the series, Seveso collaged several images of suspended ink and added texture and shape to the specimens. The resulting works reference the supple, sinuous bodies of the invertebrates through lively color.

Seveso is currently living in Bangkok, and you can find more of his work on Behance and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Inky Underwater Plumes Sprawl into Vibrant, Coral-Like Forms in Alberto Seveso’s Collages appeared first on Colossal.