There are many people in this world who have many passions all at once. Although, growing up, we are often encouraged to follow one of our interests and to further develop it into a career. It can be argued that individuals can successfully pursue different interests and become a master of their several domains. This can be defined as the basis of what a multimedia artist is. For instance, a multimedia artist could be a painter that paints with oils, acrylics, watercolors, but also does printmaking and even creates sculptures within three dimensions. There have been many artists throughout history that have done so successfully and even merged their art with another medium such as writing, fashion design, film, and theater and a lot more. This article is meant to encourage you to pursue your many interests and work hard and to turning them into successful career paths. Because there is a great example of an artist who has done so in a very fast-paced city––our very own New York City, one of the most important capitals of the art scene.
Believe In Your Artistic Fire
The first step to achieving this superpower is to break down the myth that a person cannot pursue more than one interest in their lifetime. It is almost as if you will believe that you can only train one area of your body. Just like our body our mind can also help us attain goals that are placed across different mediums within the arts or any other fields. So, in order to take the first step into pursuing our different interests, we must believe that we are able to do so and we have the amount of concentration, hard work, and interest that is required to fully engage in different fields.
Step Two: Learning and Trying
It is also important to note that if one person wants to pursue their interests, they must learn how to become good at them. This could mean training at an art school or reading a lot of books or trying it firsthand and gaining a lot of experience. That contributes to learning from errors and not being afraid of trying again and again. Once that is achieved within one area it will be easier to dive into a new art form and to explore the ins and outs of that art form and to become good at it eventually over time. Why that might seem a little intimidating at first, with time our mind becomes trained into doing something and challenges become more appealing to us.
Tying Different Art Form Together
Another great way of attaining this goal is to find bridges that hold different art fields close together. There are a lot of painters that are also writers because they can connect imagery within language to the vision they have as a painter. There are also many photographers that have great skill in the film industry and that is because they find many connections between the two art forms that make their storytelling stronger. That is because sometimes as an artist, an individual might feel the need to use different mediums in order to bring their vision to life in different ways. For instance an idea of a simple image may be better expressed through two-dimensional painting whereas another idea such as an art object may be brought to life in a clearer way with more dimensions such as sculpture, costume design or art installations. By doing so artists will be engaging their mind in different thought processes that will actually give them more powerful responses to the ideas they wish to bring to life.
A Successful Multimedia Artist: Alicia Assaad
When thinking of multimedia artists and how to become one, it is always helpful to look at a successful example. Alicia Assaad is a multimedia artist based in New York City who has been achieving great levels of success by working across different mediums that make sense for her storytelling. She has very complex ideas that require time and effort in order to make sense and with that she uses her different skills such as videography, costume design. and production to share with her audience. Alicia has been very successful at a production company called SIRXN productions. She is currently the head of 16MM Film and at this company she using 16-millimeter cameras. This has become a very niche area of videography since not so many people know how to use that type of camera. However, Kodak is pushing for more and more videographers and photographers to use this type of camera and hoping for it to reemerge into the film and fashion industry. The production has some very big projects coming up that are going to be produced in New York City and they will be set in New York and Brazil. One of the greatest missions of this production company is to create stories that are told by Gen Z for Gen Z audiences. Alicia is most excited about two of their current project which are both feature films called Who Has Your Time and Sudden Paradise. These projects will be coming soon.
Alicia is also working on her own personal projects, is publishing the second volume of the 1st edition of her own magazine. The name of her magazine is 7BB magazine and it will be published in June 2023. The mission of her publication is to empower Middle Eastern women through media intervention, subverting the dominant forms of representation of this group of women and bringing to life the perspective and modern life for these women in fashion, film, and culture. She believes it’s extraordinarily important because Middle Eastern women have often been underrepresented or not represented correctly through media. Alicia finds that her responsibility to be their storyteller and share it with audiences that appreciate them for who they really are. New York Art Life is very happy to also speak to Alicia Assaad in a new interview and we are impatiently waiting for the first edition for her magazine to be published soon so we can begin reading and become inspired with the stories that she has gathered to tell us.
