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  • Art Foundation
  • Overview
  • Gallery
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Art Foundation

  • VCUarts Qatar’s Art Foundation is an intensive one-year mandatory program intended for students who wish to pursue one of our Bachelor of Fine Art programs.

    The program aspires to teach creative thought through projects and lectures, alongside training of skill and craftsmanship.

  • The curriculum follows the philosophy “learning by doing” and is composed of four core classes that represent the basic tenets of art and design: drawing, surface, space and time, as well as short introductory courses in interior, graphics and painting & printmaking.

  • Students are not affiliated with a major department until they complete the Art Foundation program. Once successfully completed, students apply to the department of their choice during the annual spring portfolio review. Through this review, major departments make acceptance decisions based upon the evaluation of students’ academic records, creative work and performance within Art Foundation courses.

Courses & Curriculum

The Art Foundation curriculum offers four core courses representing the basic tenets of art and design: drawing, surface, space and time. These umbrella titles allow for a range of practice, technique and ideas and suggest the possibilities of the major disciplines offered at VCUarts Qatar. In addition students enroll in two 'project' courses offered by each of the major departments.

Each semester, students take two of the non-sequential studio/research courses. Project courses are offered only during the spring semester.

The requirements for the Art Foundation Program can be found at this link:
http://bulletin.vcu.edu/undergraduate/arts/art-foundation-program/#programrequirementstext

Semester plans can be found at this link:
http://bulletin.vcu.edu/undergraduate/arts/art-foundation-program/#planofstudytext

A list of Art Foundation courses can be found at this link:
http://bulletin.vcu.edu/undergraduate/arts/art-foundation-program/#coursestext

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Faculty

  • Simone Muscolino

    Director of Art Foundation

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  • Abir Zakzok

    Adjunct Faculty

  • Amira Yasser Mohamed

    Studio Teaching Assistant

  • Ayza Sheikh

    Studio Teaching Assistant

  • Dana El ladki

    Woodshop and Fablab Technician

  • Ece Yiğit

    Studio Teaching Assistant

  • Hadeer Omar

    Assistant Professor

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  • Hagar Allam

    PrintLab Technician

  • Hala Alzawaydeh

    Interim Digital Fabrication Lab and Woodshop Coordinator

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  • Jesse Payne

    Associate Professor

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  • Simone Muscolino

    Director of Art Foundation
  • Abir Zakzok

    Adjunct Faculty

  • Amira Yasser Mohamed

    Studio Teaching Assistant

BIO

Simone Muscolino is a multidisciplinary designer and video-maker. He holds a Master in Architecture from Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, with a professional focus on interaction-design and time-based media. During the past 10 years he has curated the video production of several design and architecture firms. He has being active in various fields of video production,...

Contact

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  • Ayza Sheikh

    Studio Teaching Assistant

  • Dana El ladki

    Woodshop and Fablab Technician

  • Ece Yiğit

    Studio Teaching Assistant

  • Hadeer Omar

    Assistant Professor
  • Hagar Allam

    PrintLab Technician

  • Hala Alzawaydeh

    Interim Digital Fabrication Lab and Woodshop Coordinator
BIO

Hadeer Omar (1988, Alexandria) is an Egyptian new media artist, designer, and educator. Omar holds an MFA in Design and BFA in Graphic Design from VCUarts Qatar. Her research explores cultural identity and memories, the self, and narratives artfully through immersive XR media and technologies, graphics, photography, VJ performance and video art installations.  ...

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BIO

Hala Amer is an alumna of the Interior Design department at VCUarts Qatar and is currently working in the Fabrication Lab and Woodshop as a technician. Hala hopes to pursue graduate studies at IAAC in Digital Fabrication for Emergent Futures.  Hala's work at the FabLab has allowed her to master her skills in...

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  • Jesse Payne

    Associate Professor
  • Maysaa Almumin

    Associate Professor 
  • Nathan Davis

    Associate Professor
BIO

Jesse Payne is an American artist currently working and teaching in Doha, Qatar. Payne’s work uses rigorous craft to amplify his creative interests: what does it mean to understand an artist’s gaze, and what does it do to a culture to censor it? His subjects – whether dimensioned iterations of Leonardo...

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BIO

Maysaa Almumin is an Architect and independent filmmaker. She graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. She has extensive experience in architectural practice in both London and Kuwait, where she was a partner in Small Architecture Ltd, London; and the Director of THEM Designers in Kuwait. She is a member the...

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BIO

Nathan currently teaches Surface Research in the Art Foundation program at VCUQatar. After studying sculpture at Oregon State, Nathan earned an MFA in Design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Nathan began teaching at Ohio University and then Montana State University before coming to VCUQatar. He taught undergraduate graphic design for 5...

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  • Ryan Browning

    Associate Professor
  • Saga ElKabbash

    Woodshop and Fablab Technician

BIO

Ryan Browning is a painter and interdisciplinary artist. His paintings have a way of simplifying imagery to a cartoonish state without losing the specificity of the objects he is portraying. He draws inspiration from virtual and role playing game worlds, often portraying these imaginary spaces without the presence of figures, as if they had just...

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Campus

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Student opportunities

Visiting Artists

Each year VCUarts Qatar welcomes visiting artists and designers to campus to share their expertise and experiences. Drawn from across the globe, these artists, designers, educators are highly accomplished and recognized within their respective design fields. They share their knowledge through lectures, conferences or specific workshops, broadening our students’ creative experiences and complementing our multi-cultural approach to design.

Here are just some of the visiting artists and designers who visited our Art Foundation program:

Matt King, Peter Lang, John Andrews, Stefano Mirti, Anab Jain, Elio Caccavale, Crispin Jones, Anthony Fontana.

Fieldtrips & Workshops

  • Drawing from Heritage

  • Live drawing at Al-Shaqab

  • Intense Louise Bourgeois

  • VCUQatar & VCURichmond Art Foundation Exchange

  • Doha Watches

  • Wreck this Journal

  • OrigaMe

  • Building Blocks of Freshmen

  • Auto-Graph

  • Box Beam

  • Drawing from Heritage

  • Live drawing at Al-Shaqab

  • Intense Louise Bourgeois

Drawing from Heritage

April 2012

Twenty-five students from our Art Foundation program visited the Diwan Amiri Quarter in the Msheireb site in Doha, where they participated in the Msheireb Art & Architecture project called “Drawing from Heritage”. Students were asked to draw on-site capturing the on-going construction and existing heritage in a variety of mediums.

Live drawing at Al-Shaqab

March 2012

In the spring semester 2012 the Foundation program established a connection with Al-Shaqab to engage students to draw the arabian horses and foals as an alternative to the traditional life drawings. All students of the drawing classes were engaged in a full-day drawing exercise at Al-Shaqab and captured the Arabian horses features and form through a variety of mediums. .

Intense Louise Bourgeois

March 2012

In collaboration with the QMA gallery in Katara, the Art Foundation program setup a short and intensive workshop with the focus on Louise Bourgeois the renowned French-Amerian artist and sculputor. All freshmen were invited and encouraged to create artworks based around the work of Louise Bourgeois. The final artworks from the workshop were exhibited in June 2012 during an event at the QMA gallery

  • VCUQatar & VCURichmond Art Foundation Exchange

  • Doha Watches

  • Wreck this Journal

VCUQatar & VCURichmond Art Foundation Exchange

February 2012

This exchange brought together the two campuses of Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar and Richmond. The Art Foundation program from both campuses worked together in running an exchange inviting nine freshmen from Richmond to Doha in February 2012 to participate in an intensive collaborative workshop between the freshmen from each campus.

Doha Watches

February 2010

London-based designer Crispin Jones who works at the intersection of Art and Design known broadly as Critical Design was invited to run a workshop for our Art Foundation program students. The one-day intensive workshop focused on developing collaborative clocks through video-making within the Time Studio.

Wreck this Journal

August 2011

Art Foundation students took part in a short workshop based on the book called ‘Wreck this Journal’ by Keri Smith. Wreck this ournal is an illustrated book that features a subversive collection of prompts, asking readers to muster up their best mistake- and mess-making abilities to fill the pages of the book (and destroy them). The students were asked to complete the book in a month. The artworks then became part of an internal Art Foundation exhibition at VCUQatar.

  • OrigaMe

  • Building Blocks of Freshmen

  • Auto-Graph

OrigaMe

November 2010

Art Foundation program students developed several origami in various forms to be exhibited during the VCUQatar Open House event together with the view of the ‘Building Blocks of Freshmen’. Additionally students answered the question ‘Why do I want to become an artist or designer?.’ The answers were launched into the VCUQatar building in the form of origami airplanes to arrive as gadgets for any of the visitors to collect.

Building Blocks of Freshmen

November 2010

All freshmen students attended an open-air workshop as players in a stop-motion movie created on the grounds of Education City. The emphasis was on understanding collaboration and team-spirit as well as coordination.

Auto-Graph

February 2010

A number of freshmen participated in an intensive workshop run by John Andrews, a professor from AA in London. The workshop intended to expand on the basic principles of automatic drawing and how this form of drawing may influence the design of three-dimensional space. For two days the students experimented with calligraphic notation and its abstraction into built form.

Inquiries

VCUarts Qatar
Al Luqta Street
Education City
Doha, Qatar
+974 4402 0555
vcuqinfo@vcu.edu

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