m/b imprints.

“i’d rather draw a circle than write a circle.”

these are my own infamous words, uttered countless times during my first ~13 years as an artist and designer. this was often said as a way to defend my choice not to learn to code for my day-to-day design work. seeded deep in my subconscious i knew this was just a sad excuse to avoid delving into something that ultimately intimidated (and still does intimidate) me.

code. i was resisting code. 🤦

how’d i end up bridging that unseen and seemingly insurmountable gap?

i found generative art.

Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art. — Philip Galanter

what had been an artistic blind spot for me has become a gateway where previously no code learning could hold my attention.

any formal design education i’ve completed has included basic html + css courses, each with enough theory to get me over the hump of conceptual understanding with regard to how the internet is made manifest. any deeper learning i’ve been introduced to was self sought though, in order to create a better relationship with my developer and engineer counterparts. after all, knowing 1) how communicate with the people coding your visual designs and 2) understanding the constraints they may be up against in building them, are key to product design success.

nowhere in my previous art history lessons or graphic design education was generative art noted. at least not in a way that i recognized as relevant to me. okay actually, a text book most assuredly talked about it and i was too stressed out about midterms, my then girlfriend and/or my next critique session to take notice. 🫠

from time to time i’d find myself working with someone who identified as a ‘creative coder’ or a ‘creative technologist’ and would have my interest piqued when looking through their portfolios to find code based, motion design outputs or prototypes of data model visualizations. perhaps it was then that i started to have a notion of where i would be personally headed creatively? i often shrugged off any curiousity by stating that path was too hard, too cumbersome, too much of a divergence from my design focus.

it wasn’t until i dug into nfts that i was fully introduced to generative art and its algorithmic counterpart. when i say introduced, let me be clear that it was more of a face-on-fire-brain-melting-with-excitement type of introduction as i started to grok the possibilities i was seeing pour out of artists via artblocks and fxhash. it was like my favorite mid-century, minimalist, modern artists were making sweet, sweet love to modern technology. i wanted in on it.

i wanted to code a circle, damnit.

so i did. eventually. it took me about a year to get over myself, my resistance, my fear and finally try, but i did it. and then i did it again. how?

with these resources…

* the coding train p5js (+more!) tutorials

* p5js.org + the p5js web editor

* learning processing by daniel shiffman

* getting started with p5js by lauren mccarthy, casey reas, and ben fry

* genuary.art for ongoing, annual prompt inspiration

bit by bit i’ve been stretching my brain to learn how to code my art on and off for about 6 months now. i’ve yet to fully complete the genuary prompts for this year, but am well on my way. once i do i’ll make an imprints post with all of them in one place, it only seems fitting considering the imprints visual was born of these early works.

my ultimate goal would be to create a long form algorithm based project that i could host on my own site, complete with levers for potential collectors to co-create their own output (think qql by tyler hobbs x dandelion wist mané). in the nearer term i’m excited to create my first long form project and release it on fxhash, i’d say that’s my biggest goal artistically of the year. if i can do it more than once, say with a curated set of outputs on the next one, that’d be a huge personal success.

as i work up to those goals, i’ve started releasing some of my favorite one off outputs thus far as nfts on the tezos blockchain. you can find the piece featured in the opening of this article as an edition on objkt.com — what goes up. is based on the genuary prompt from day 16, reflection of a reflection. in creating it i learned the arc function and narrowed in on the color palette i’ve been exploring throughout this genuary set.

i can feel the inklings of my first long form project percolating, but nothing concrete has emerged yet. i’ll be sure to keep you posted as i work through it. in the meantime, check out those resources above and make a circle of your own. you never know what code may unlock for you. resistance is futile after all.

as always, thank you for being here. if you haven’t subscribed, please do, especially ahead of next week where i’ll be announcing a giveaway for a very special piece of literary work by a talented friend. 👀

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.

after watching, and notionally investing in, the crypto space for a couple of years i took the leap into minting my own art as nfts. i’ve been on this journey for two years now and am more motivated than ever to keep at it. why?

i believe in myself.

myself as an artist and my art as assets. equally important to all that, i believe in you and the value your appreciation brings to my art.

“asset: a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality.” — oxford languages

i’m fully happy to share my work by making it available across the internet for consumption. please right click and save to your heart’s content. pin these works to wherever you store your inspiration and share them with your people. this exploratory flow of our shared visual language is inherent to the human spirit and is something that needs to be championed. art should be publicly viewable and accessible, this goes for physical, digital and everything in between.

the above falls down when work loses its provenance. making something publicly viewable shouldn’t negate the possibility for the world to recognize the origin of a work and the person who crafted it. in fact, it should do the opposite. by bringing the flow back to the artist, the audience is prompted to participate in the evolving value of the items they are viewing, downloading and sharing.

there are humans behind these creations.

humans you can connect with in ways never before imagined. the gallery has moved from flat artists statements to deep links connecting you with as much information as the artist desires to share. you can see their process, you can connect with their vision, you can buy their creations.

you can choose to adhere to the spirit of web3 and honor royalties so, as an artist grows an audience, their early works — for which they most likely made little to no money — will return a fraction of value back to that creator.

if you want a primer on the royalty conversation, there is a debate hitting the nft space of late and kofi has done a brilliant job highlighting the impact of enabling royalties for independent creators. check out their thread above.

value is an iterative conversation to be had…

…not a singular assignment to be made. after all, growth happens when boundaries are stretched and new connections are formed. connections with people, connections with art, connections with ideas.

the time has arrived where artists may view themselves as independent, public business entities. why not further diversify the patronage model by building upon the idea of the publicly traded company? where the company is the independent artist themself, and their art, the investors share? where the art traded is logged publicly + transparently, for all to see.

the technology of the blockchain, and the nfts that are written into versions of it, have opened up the possibility for the above to happen. it has been happening for a handful of years. things have now matured to a point where an artist can readily bring their art, whether physically or digitally created, to audiences in a way where they themselves become the platform.

rather than having to overcome the hurdle of standing up the technology themselves, the ability to mint an artwork means artists may now create a living record of an artwork in tandem with sharing it out to the masses. their work now leaves a breadcrumb back to its origin, the human behind it — an artist with which an audience can engage and support, or if you prefer analogies, take a position in.

we have entered a time where the provenance of, and a revenue stream for, artworks can originate with, flow back to and significantly impact artists in perpetuity.

i’ve made the leap into nfts because i want you to take a position in my future and the future of all artists. by doing so, you are laying a stake in your future too. growing alongside all of us, creating a world where independent creatives can breakout of the boundaries dictated by past structures and create new realities.

thanks for being here + holding space for my art, all art, to thrive.

last week i had the pleasure of being interviewed by the crew over at LIT. they do a weekly spotlight, or SpotLIT as they call it, highlighting a member of the LIT community. i was honored to jump on stage with their brilliant hosts, statuette and samari. (i know some of you were present for that live interview, thanks for making it out!)

during the interview we touched on inspiration and i wanted to dig into the topic a bit more. i mentioned that i approach my art through observation. taken at face value, this can be a limiting definition…

“observation: an act of recognizing and noting a fact or occurrence often involving measurement with instruments. a record or description so obtained.” — merriam-webster

that’s all rather clinical sounding, isn’t it? that’s because it’s only a sliver of what i’m hoping to convey.

in any given moment, i’m observing the world around me. i’m taking in the structures, both literal and figurative, that define our surroundings. this can be a passive exercise — which i believe it is for many — or it can be active. in a single moment you can choose to observe internal reactions (thoughts, feelings) arising alongside a plethora of external circumstances. the key is that you have to choose it or, said another way, tune in.

during the interview i believe i mentioned this much more succinctly as being aware of “what i feel”. while this is an accurate description, i find in the moment of inspiration it often goes beyond that, off into a space that is wholly undefinable.

i’ve come to believe that it may not be possible to fully understand an artist’s inspiration. this isn’t meant as a pessimistic perspective, i mean it to be an honest one. in order to understand inspiration, you’d have to crawl inside an artists skin, hook into their nerve endings and breathe air with their lungs. you’d need to literally walk with their feet and drink their morning coffee while they yawn and replay the mismatched scenes of their previous night’s dreams.

inspiration is an all encompassing event. something that goes beyond a simple verbal answer to spoken questions. if anything, an artwork is a question created in response to the very inquiries arising from inspiration itself.

for instance let’s look at the resonance series. if i’m 100% honest, i’m still not fully sure what these pieces are all meant to convey, i myself have more questions than answers. is it a reflection on connection? humanity? oneness? yes, sure, all of it and more. now i get that this may not be the sexy answer an audience is hungry for. it could even be taken as a grating (or perhaps just confusing) perspective.

i think this is due to an over emphasis of the outcome. yes, you read that right. i believe we often over romanticize the finished output of art when in reality, the process of creating a piece is equally important. the observations, feelings, brushstrokes, pen marks, color decisions and unexpected mishaps are also the art.

here’s what i’d love every human who’s curious about an artists inspiration to take away from this wild, meandering river of thought — inspiration is the art. you already get to experience it because you’re an artist too.

we all have the ability to observe and feel, therefore creativity is inherent in all of us. inspiration is right there. you’re standing in it. you’re breathing it. you don’t need another human’s body or mind to “get it”. pause for a moment and let it resonate.

now, go create.

in 2008 i went to antarctica for the first time. on the journey there i met a life long friend, a friend that i would end up losing this year. we nearly shared a birthday, each of ours being one day different and two years apart. our life long friendship ended up lasting less than 20 years.

the week before i lost this friend i minted brain wave[s]. a piece i’d sketched more than a year prior and one i’d been tinkering with in procreate for over a year. i had no clue when minting this piece, let alone when giving it a title, that this friend’s brain cancer had returned. no idea that in a week’s time she’d pass away. when i look back at the process of this piece, there’s no doubt i was sensing something while making it. it’s uncanny. eerie even.

at this point you’re probably wondering why i’m making you so f*cking sad, apologies. after all it’s not my intention to over index on traumatic events, rather shed some light on a connection to a piece that has left me contemplating and then contemplating some more. so let’s rewind a bit. circles? antarctica? brain cancer? what’s the through line here?

well…art.

circles are a reoccurring theme in my art. one that i quite literally can’t shake. when i draw them they come in all textures, styles and sizes. they are often the most figurative element in my work, compositions that are created through abstraction of feeling and observation. i intentionally avoid creating anything too representative in my artworks, or at least i thought i did, because there’s that circle. nearly, always. it’s hanging out here. filling the composition there. i just can’t seem to shake it.

“in everyday use, the term “circle” may be used interchangeably to refer to either the boundary of the figure, or to the whole figure including its interior” — Wikipedia

whether i want to admit it or not, the circle is a repetitive, figurative element. a cheeky bugger often shoving its way in- and onto my canvas saying, “i’m here! dance with me or gtfo.” after hundreds of artworks i’ve learned to not resist its presence. instead i welcome it, observing what it’s there to tell me, listening for the story or lesson or idea it’s working to convey.

what i’ve come to find is that the circle is often a being. a person of my world, our world, come to roost in my visual psyche. often it’s someone i know or knew. someone who’s passed on and is lingering as a presence in my current day to day. someone who’s sitting right next to me or even at times, multiple people converging as one orb. when i draw a curve or code a chord it’s a way to connect their collective dots and, if they’ve moved on, celebrate them in a small way.

in the case of the three circles present in brain wave[s], for me, they are a past / present / future representation of my friend and our times together. as an artist, the ultimate beauty is that perhaps for you these figurative elements will be someone, something or somewhere else. whatever your abstraction is, i can only hope it brings you as much peace as the evolution and outcome of this artwork has for me.

thanks for reading and / or listening this week. have questions or comments? drop them below.

see you wednesday!

⚫️✨

p.s. here’s the initial sketch process that went on to become brain wave[s].

abstract art can be so…abstract.

as an artist who doesn’t love the idea of forcing their opinion on others, i relish the ability of abstract art to create nothing from something. this opaqueness has it’s downfalls though, the primary one being audiences left scrunching their eyebrows wondering wtf an artist was thinking when they made ‘that’ work.

⚫️ why imprints, why now?

to put it simply, i’d like to lift the abstract veil. just a bit. there are stories behind my artworks that just won’t fit in their descriptions. these stories were never meant for the description because with my pieces a description is part of the artwork itself.

🤝 i’d love to meet the people who vibe with my art

up to this point any interaction i’ve had with the community bubbling up around my art has mostly been on twitter. this has inherent pros and cons. i’d like to share more intentionally about my art beyond titles / prices / thank you’s + hear back from those who are so inclined.

🎧 read or listen?

i personally enjoy the podcast medium, as well as listening along with audio formats like twitter spaces. i get that sometimes a wall of text can be overwhelming + there are days when hearing the voice behind a thought can impart a touch more clarity + humanity.

SO, i’ll be releasing posts weekly on wednesdays in both written + spoken form. you can give this post a listen and, if you’re into artist interviews, be sure to check out my podcast, the 1:1. who knows, maybe one day we’ll do some video too?

✅ subscribe + unlock some art

i’d love for you to subscribe + join me on a wee bit deeper journey into mark making, both literal and figurative.

bonus: along the way you’ll get to see me flail around + learn to create my art with code.

double bonus: your confirmation email will include a special link for those web 3 inclined subscribers. 👀 my smol way of saying thanks.

🖤 see you on wednesday!

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