Episode 17: Interview with a Renaissance Man

This week we continue a series of episodes on the craft of worldbuilding as a way to connect RPGS back to real life, and vice versa.  We focus on introducing a model of worldbuilding that incorporates three player mechanics:  exploration, interaction, and combat.

We are especially thrilled to share with you our interview with Rob Kolomyski.  Rob James Kolomyski is an artist and educator based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Most recently his work has been selected for inclusion in the 2021 Drawing Discourse juried exhibition at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. In 2019, his work was featured at the Open Door 15 juried exhibition at the Rosalux gallery in Minneapolis, MN, and the One Shot exhibition at the Manifest gallery in Cincinnati, OH. He has also exhibited at the 2016 National Juried Exhibition at the First Street Gallery in Chelsea, New York and ‘The Retrieval of the Beautiful’ exhibition at The Painting Center, Chelsea, New York. Rob's work was also selected to exhibit at the ‘Fresh Paint’ Juried Biannual at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. His most recent solo show was ‘Liminal’ at the Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH. Over the last decade, Robert has exhibited at the Soo Visual Arts Center, in Minneapolis, MN; the Brownsville Museum of Fine Arts, TX; the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei, Taiwan; the Da Xiang Art Space in Taichung City, Taiwan; Ever Gold Gallery in San Francisco, CA; The Lexington Art League in Lexington, KY; The Foundry Art Center in St. Louis, MO; and Max Fish Gallery in New York City, NY.

Robert's work has also been selected for inclusion in several publications including the “International Painting Annual”, by Manifest Press, Cincinnati, OH; “Weak Painting” Exhibition Catalog, by Garden City Publishing Taipei, Taiwan, “What is Weak Painting?”, Review by Tzu-Chieh, Jian, Garden City Publishing, Taipei, Taiwan; and “Studio Visit Volume 8”, by The Open Studio Press Boston, MA.

Rob’s first career was an engineer for the Toyota Motor Company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he worked for ten years designing and producing rapid prototypes in the Research and Development area. He left that career in pursuit of a dream to become a public art educator. Since then, he has obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Michigan State University as well as a K-12 teaching certification. He has taught all levels of college drawing, painting and design, including the graduate level as a visiting professor at Michigan State University. He has also taught at South Texas College and is currently a professor and Department Chair of the Art, Music and Theatre department at Inver Hills Community college in St. Paul Minnesota where he lives with his wife, twelve-year-old daughter Eva and Airedale Terrier, Nessie.

Along the way, we refer to some interesting source material:

Dice in Mind Worldbuilding
Arkenforge
Never Ending Dungeon

Welcome to Dice in Mind, a weekly podcast in which we explore the meaning of life through the lens of RPGs!  In each episode, we will consider everyday stuff like science, religion, philosophy, and economics…through the lens of a specific roleplaying game and its dice mechanic.

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Music by Kevin McCloud courtesy of Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 license (https://www.youtube.com/c/kmmusic/featured).