a minimal origin story.
monochrome minimals was my first art series. here's how it came to be.
welcome back! we’re one month in to imprints weekly posts and check out this spread. 🖤 wherever you’re tuning in from, thanks for being here!
what is now monochrome minimals was born out of three different the100dayproject explorations from 2015, 2016 and 2017. at the time i was still on instagram and had recently removed myself from facebook. in the year after making, posting and sharing those initial daily projects i asked myself some hard questions about social media and data ownership and the purpose of art in the world.
in the months after the 2016 u.s. presidential election i came to the conclusion that it was time to give social media a big, flying, middle finger. i retreated to contemplate those hard questions and mostly just take a break from being online every single f*cking day. as a liberal artist living in the u.s., i was a bit depressed. hell, as a human who cares about other humans i was depressed.
amongst all of this i also made a career transition. these are big kid words for, i left my creative agency gig to freelance as a digital / graphic / ux / ui / insert-your-favorite-title-du-jour designer. i had hopes of finding something more tech product focused with a “good for all” bent. i landed a contract and within 6 months was on a payroll again, full time, at a company with a mission i believed in.
as a visual artist + designer i find it difficult to separate my paid work creative brain from my personal project creative brain.
...they coexist in the same head after all.
while i spent the next few years figuring out what it meant for me to be a designer in the tech world, i put my head in the sand with respect to my art. at least this is what i thought at the time.
here's the ironic thing about brains: they aren’t segmented. not in the way i kept labeling mine. while i thought my ‘art brain’ was dormant — and i kept beating myself up for not showing up in that way — it was always present. i was gobbling up info and learning new processes. all the while growing more comfortable with the astonishing scale of change the worlds of the internet and computing and data share were undergoing.
here i am, 5+ years later with more confidence in “speculative” spaces than ever before. with a strong desire to create and share, i'm now empowered with the understanding that ☝️ i can do so with full ownership of my data and ✌️ i can invite others to partake in the journey with me.
monochrome minimals is the manifestation of years spent learning, listening and observing.
these illustrations are the world distilled to its basic building blocks — shapes and energy. some are static. some move a little. some move a lot. all exist on a grayscale spectrum because nothing in the world is segmented. not even our brains.
i created 33 original 1/1 pieces. 11 black. 11 gray. 11 white. a monochrome spectrum of sorts. i did a collector giveaway of a non-numbered 34th — no. xx perspective — and, once each minimal sold out, i airdropped an edition via my first owned contract to every holder.
while creating this series i learned some lessons and formed some strong opinions about art on the blockchain. the primary one being that minting my art to shared contracts wasn’t long term viable, nor was it something i wanted to continue with. the airdrop of no. 00 begin, again served as a bridge from nascent minting exploration to full ownership of my on chain contracts.
i’ve pondered moving monochrome minimals from its initial opensea shared contract origins to a new, owned contract via manifold. i do think it serves as a moment in time all its own though, of an artist growing with this technology. for now, i think i’ll leave it as it is.
all of that said, i do have something special in the works to bring these pieces to my owned m/b imprints contract in a way that both rewards collectors of my genesis series and celebrates my first two years as an artist dedicated to their craft. if you want to be in on that, be sure to own a monochrome minimal + stay tuned, i’ll introduce the art here first.
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thank you for being here this week. as always, if you have questions or comments i welcome them! please drop ‘em below.
see you wednesday!
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p.s. this week i find myself listening to bon iver while creating and stumbled upon this collab with francis and the lights. 💎 what are you listening to?