âEach friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.â
Anais Nin
Growing up my father used to love to say to me: âEdgar, friends are always more important and valuable than money, donât ever forget that.â Itâs a phrase I heard so often that I feel like itâs now become a part of my essence, forever embedded in my DNA.
It was also one of the first things that was said to me about web3, NFTs, and cryptoart when Sarah Zucker introduced me to them back in 2020.
Sarah and I agreed to speak for the first time about NFTs and cryptoart on October 19, 2020. I vividly remember Sarah sharing that she felt like I would really resonate with the technology, the communities, and the ethos emerging around them. She also shared that she wanted to invite me into the space so that we could talk as friends about the experience, the process, the evolution, and of course, being friends who love to gab: the GOSSIP, drama, and the possibilities found within this newly forged space. She emphasized that NFTs were really about relationship building and creating connections with artists and collectors. As an artist with an extensive background in creating digitally native and screen based works, who also has a penchant for collaboration, community building, and networking, this invitation definitely piqued my interest.
By this time Sarah and I had already developed a deeply nourishing, fun, playful, and inspiring friendship. Having collaborated in the past on performance projects, exhibitions, installations, and more, Sarah and I had also found a deep kinship in being able to share about the many ups, downs, and all-arounds that being an artist and a public persona comes with. We had also become each otherâs cheerleaders & supporters. I was enamored with Sarahâs visionary gifts, her ability to tell enchanting stories, and her diverse yet complimentary skills as an artist and community leader.
We had both also connected extensively around the fact that we use social media, the internet, and screen based technologies to share our art and our messages with our communities. Before NFTs, the gems we made were created with the hope that theyâd be shared, liked, amplified, and help draw attention to us as artists. It was mind blowing for me to come to understand that NFTs meant that, for the first time in our lives, there was a technology available to us for editioning our artwork and taking control of our artistic futures. With the inclusion of royalties in the contracts, it also meant that we could sell our work with the possibility of being rewarded for our hard work in the future, a revolutionary improvement to the current experience I had been having as an artist with relative success in the traditional art world.
By the time I entered into the NFT scene in late 2020, I had already had two solo exhibitions at museums in two different states, one in Los Angeles at the Vincent Price Art Museum, and the second at Oregon Contemporary in Portland, Oregon. I was living in Oklahoma at the time finishing up a two year artist residency in Tulsa and had just started attending the University of California, Berkeleyâs MFA program in art. It was also months into the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter uprising, and so much more. It was a tumultuos and uncertain time and a time that also felt incredibly mutable and plastic. It felt like the perfect time for me to jump into a new venture and to begin my exploration of this brand new world that had been so generously laid out before me.
Sarah was kind enough to send over $15 worth of ETH so that I could mint my first artwork. Little did I know that a few months later, minting prices would go up by hundreds and, at times, even thousands of dollars. Thankfully I minted my first NFT about a month after our initial conversation on November 23, 2020 on Rarible. Mutant Key To The Post Internet became my genesis token and was a way for me to claim that I was evolving as an artist and that the Internet was too. We were evolving together. Not only that but this artwork was the first piece I had ever made using both some of my well known collage art as well as some new experimentations in coding and animation. This piece felt very much like a bridge between my past self and the infinite possibilities found in my future mutations. Not only were NFTs giving me a place to edition and share my artwork, they were also giving me permission to explore new technologies and experiment with new ways of creating and existing as an artist.
I was pleasantly surprised and excited to see some of these editions get collected by artists I respected and saw as pioneers in this brand new world; people I also considered to be my friends.
I knew that one of the first things I wanted to do with some of the eth I had made from selling these editions was to collect some of Sarahâs artwork. Thankfully, a few days later, on November 27, 2020, I had the perfect opportunity to do so. I saw one of her 10 editions of Vapor Prism available on Known Origin for .18 eth, which was $90 at the time. This artwork felt like the perfect first piece to collect from Sarah. I was enthralled with the pieceâs signature colors of blue and pink, and it featured Sarahâs now iconic use of the analog vhs feedback glitch in creating the piece. The neverending loop felt like such a breath of fresh air for me, a world I could live in forever, a new dimension to play in, and the possibility found within the slippery, liminal space of the glitch. Here was the glitch in a form that felt functional and frivolous at the same time. Glitch as dancing bear, glitch as a grinning cheshire cat, glitch as joyous undulating magic that feels both familiar and uncannily new and unknown. This artwork made me feel like I was staring into the abyss of an alien yet eerily welcoming dimension, like I was glimpsing into the future and into the past at the same time. It was also a bridge like my first token, a portal, and a potent spell by a powerful light witch. As an artist who often works with divination and transcendental states in my artwork, this psychedelic vision felt like the perfect first artwork to add to my collection.
But what felt most important was that I was collecting art by a friend of mine that I loved and that I wanted to see succeed and grow as an artist. I was adding to the story of them becoming a successful person in the cryptoart community and was lucky enough to also be able to be a part of that hxstory too. It brings me so much joy now to be able to share about this with all of you and to be able to share this story of the first NFT I ever collected. The first of what have now become hundreds and hundreds of stories and connections I have made in the cryptoart community. I am cherishing the preciousness of being able to share about this nascent history in this psychedelic, iterative, emergent way. Ever so grateful to Matt Kane for this invitation. A friend that I was fortunate enough to meet through Sarah and who has become a source of constant inspiration and leadership in our rhizomatic and prismatic communities.
** Addendum **
I am adding another layer to this etch as it feels magical, personal, vulnerable, and I feel is very much in alignment with the ethos & intentions I feel Matt Kane has set out with this amazing project which is historicizing, documenting, contextualizing, and unifying our cryptoart communities using this exciting new process on the blockchain.
So, a week ago, after seeing Matt Kane post Etch #1, I cried, I got so inspired, and could feel how deeply important this project & process was for our communities. I felt galvanized by Mattâs call to action, showing the world, our collectors, and our artistic communities that what we are doing here is so much more than money. We are creating new structures to hold & care for artists. We are envisioning a world where artists can thrive and share their truths. A world where artists get to have a say in their success, in their journeys, in their stories, and how in the ways we can benefit from them culturally, conceptually, and financially.
I was so excited to share my first etch and got ready to mint it. And, as I tried to mint it, I realized that I did not have enough ethereum to do so. I had only a few cents left of ethereum after having spent all of it on artwork from other artists. I was forced to pause.
I decided to reach out to my communities on Twitter and started âshillingâ my artwork to them, hoping Iâd get a collector to collect an artwork on the ethereum blockchain from me. After a few days of doing this and getting likes & retweets, but no collectors, I felt embarrassed and saddened by the fact that I had not sold art on the ethereum blockchain for months and didnât have enough money to to mint this etch.
I turned to some of my âCryptoQueersâ friends and shared with them that I was feeling like a âfailureâ in the cryptoart world for not being able to sell my art and that it was hard to sit with the dissonance it caused me as I have been feeling quite the opposite in my traditional art practice and as a therapist & brujx. These friends kindly and caringly reminded me that this is a challenging time in the market, and that it is a feeling that others were also sharing. It was affirming and validating to know that I was not alone. We also shared that despite this being a challenging time in the space financially, many of us are here because of our connection to each other and our firm belief in what we are building together.
To challenge this feeling, I decided to re-direct my attention towards the successes I have had in this space and was pleasantly reminded that I had sold one of my most important NFTs this year and, not only that, that I had sold it to none other than Matt Kane.
I minted the performance art piece Mutant Fire as a part of Playboy & the Sevens Foundationâs exhibition on The Art of Gender and Sexuality. Matt collected it on January 17, 2022. I decided to post about it and to uplift and celebrate this grand achievement. This artwork is about finding your inner fire, embracing your inner freak, and trusting in the power of your magic. It felt so important to revisit this artwork and the spells & intentions I had imbued within it and to see it, again, in Matt Kaneâs collection at this moment in my cryptoart career.
Shortly after posting this, I received an email letting me know that one, then two, then three, four, five, and finally six pieces of mine sold on the tezos blockchain. It felt very much like the Universe responding to my sadness and to my previous statement of feeling like a âfailureâ during this challenging time in the cryptoart world.
As if this wasnât enough, the following day, Matt Kane retweeted my post on Mutant Fire and shared it with SuperRareroses aka SuperRare Zack when he asked: âWhoâs not on SuperRare but should be?â
Zack immediately DMed me and I was almost instantly onboarded onto SuperRare. I am still recovering from the whiplash of this and have been sitting with the meaning behind this brand new possibility in front of me.
But, the icing on the cake, and the biggest *wink from the Universe* came on the following day after I announced publicly that I had been onboarded onto SuperRare.
Matt Kane minted Etch #1606
"We believe in our magic. Our magic believes in us."
He made this etch in collaboration with my artwork, Mutant Fire. His words floored me. I felt so seen. I could see how he felt seen in my art. To learn that he has also felt empowered by my spell and that he returns to it and receives the magic that I imbued in it has deeply touched my heart. Itâs reminded me that magic is organic, emergent, wild, and uncanny. It will reach out to you in the midst of your darkest and most unsure moments. Magic is real. We are magic.
Matt was generous and kind enough to not only create this etch, but he also GIFTED this etch to me!!! Itâs been a dream of mine to own a work by him and now I have one that he has made that was inspired by MY art! What?!!!
And then I looked at my wallet and saw that the transfer of this token, somehow, had also transferred ethereum into my wallet and that it was JUST enough for me to be able to mint this etchâŠ..
