Welcome to this week’s Minty art round-up covering some of the biggest news stories in Crypto Art and NFTs, as well as highlighting our Artist of the Week.
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Top Sales in Crypto Art 📈
This week two artists @Pak and @Trevor Jones took Nifty Gateway by storm with a series of epic collaborative drops which rewrote the history books. Aptly named The Collision, The Moment, The Mechanism, & The Canvas, these 33 pieces reached a total sale value of over $1,300,000.
This drop show the incredible value of not only the artists in question but also the digital art world as a whole, and we hope this is only just the start!
The next piece of news pertains to world renown artist @Hackatao, a brilliant artist, and huge advocate of NFT’s and cryptoart.
Often spoken about for his thought provoking art work his latest SuperRare creation “Alice in CryptoLand” is now part of @cryptosaurus3 collection, purchased for 18 Eth ($11,700) this piece is “always late, for a Metaverse date”.
We can’t wait to see his next masterpiece!
Upcoming Events 🎉
Grammy award winning recording artist RAC and Reisinger Andres have a new piece out on SuperRare, “Elephant Dreams Part III”.
With a list price of 51.5 Eth ($33,500) this piece is sure to sell quickly, so act fast to avoid missing out on this incredible artwork.
It’s here ✨ @reisingerandres x @RAC Elephant Dreams Part III 🍎 >> on @SuperRare superrare.co/artwork-v2/ele…From our latest Twitter campaign, 12 Days of Minty.art, we’re today putting the spotlight on Amaan Jahangir @AmaanJah.
An amazing artist from the UK Amaan never fails to create thought provoking artwork which perfectly encapsulates contradicting and coinciding feelings, putting on paper what we can so very rarely put into words.
Follow us on Twitter to see more superb artists every day!
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Artist of the Week 🎨
This week we have an exclusive interview with the upcoming artist Gavin Shapiro @shapiro500. He sheds some light on some of his incredible work and explained his inspiration when making CryptoArt.
1- Looking through your work, one thing was unmistakable, that was your use of Flamingos. However there also seems to be a recurring theme of mathematical principles and logic. Do you purposefully do this as a juxtaposition or do you see intricate links between bright funny creatures and hardcore maths?
Great observation. In thinking about my work and the evolution of my style, I’ve always consistently had some kind of comedic element juxtaposed against some kind of very serious element. Humor is extremely important to me, and a major priority in my work is to make sure I'm creating something that makes people smile.
However, I’ve also realized that I can use my work to show people the beauty of certain topics that I find interesting and thought provoking. Mathematics is a great example of this, because not only can it be visually arresting, but it can be an incredibly elegant tool in creating structures that will loop seamlessly. Mathematics, of course, is also found throughout nature, and I think it resonates with people on an emotional level more than they might think.
2- Osaka is a great city, I had the pleasure of visiting this year, although only for a short time. Did you find any inspiration from your time living there that can be reflected through your work?
Absolutely! Before I had created any kind of cohesive series of personal work, I was really struggling with what it meant to have a style. I had been a 3D motion design generalist for nearly a decade, and while I had created a huge body of work in a wide variety of styles based on other peoples’ direction, I realized that I never really had created my own work that could be easily identifiable as my own personal “style”.
So, very intentionally and consciously, I did my best to begin developing my style by communicating aspects of myself that were unique and personal to me. Because of my time in Osaka, and my emotional connection to Japan, Japanese architecture was one of these initial elements. Another major element was the use of penguins. For whatever reason, I’ve always loved penguins since I was a kid, and they’ve often made their way into my art and projects. If you go back through my Instagram, you can see how these inspired my first stylistic explorations and trace how my work evolved from there.
3- I noticed Cleithrophobia had elements of Kinetic sculpture (Broken during production) in it. Is this type of amalgamation something you plan on continuing in the future? I imagine the possibilities are endless?
Yes, for sure! I am always trying to take what I’ve made and re-imagine it in new contexts while still maintaining a sense of what my style is and where it developed from. My ultimate hope is to develop a style that is recognizable so that I can use it as a framework to tell different stories and communicate new ideas to people. In other words, in trying to evolve my art, I’m thinking about it in terms of “what it says” and “how it says it” and I would like both to ultimately be very genuinely representative of me.
4- You have been using tokenized work since August, can you tell us what first drew you into it and elaborate on the benefits of tokenization please?
I was first approached by Nifty Gateway in May this year, and they asked me if I wanted to do a drop at the end of July. At the time, I had been looking for ways that I could use my platform to help the Black Lives Matter movement, so I immediately saw it as an opportunity to make some kind of a difference. I did that drop as a fundraiser, and all of my earnings were donated to Black Lives Matter, Color of Change, and Black Art Futures Fund. I am extremely grateful to everyone who contributed.
Since then, I’ve had another drop on Nifty Gateway, as well as a handful of releases on SuperRare. To me, the benefits of tokenization are really clear: at last, there is a way for digital art to have collectibility and scarcity in the same way that the traditional art world has seen for centuries. Of course, there are other benefits as well (like artists being paid a commission for secondary sales) but the main benefit to me is that an entire new market for digital art is opening up, giving digital artists the opportunity to make a living from their work.
5- From Tokyo to Paris and it seems everywhere in between your work is definitely making people smile. We have seen Fibonacci, Rule 30, Zoetrope animation. What else is in the pipeline we can look forward to seeing?
I’m really excited about an upcoming drop on Nifty Gateway. I’ve also begun a collaboration with a music artist and am looking forward to that as well. Other than that, there are a few other collaborations and personal pieces on my radar :)
Minty weekly video update #2▶
Market Overview & NFT Growth ₿
Here are the latest updates on the top Non-Fungible Tokens in art sales:
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