B.A.D's PEOPLE PORTRAITS

Sonia Li

Artist

If you want to see impactful art which is acknowledged by international curators, juries and funds, you need to see what Sonia Li is creating. She describes her art as "intuitive and sensual", and maybe this is what makes her work so much colorful. But not only this: Combinations of elements from nature, body and images of food shape her art and make it appear rich and harmonious, and absurd at the same time. Alltogether a great experience.

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
Sonia Li

What is your professional background and career?
Artist

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
B. 1983, Taipei, Taiwan. Live/work in Brooklyn, NY.
Li is an interdisciplinary artist working with art, dance and technology. Her work is intuitive and sensual to explore the subconscious dimensions of reality. She combines audiovisual, sensorial stimulations and movement hinging on her personal transformations. In 2019, Li won AFIAS Moving Image Award/Spain. In 2018, she received grant from Taiwan Ministry of Culture and finalist in ICIA International New Media Competition/Poland. Her video works showed internationally such as Centro Cultural FIESP/FILE Festival Brazil, Lightbox NYC/CADAF and Naves Matadero/Spain Moving Images Festival. Her works have been featured on PBS/WHRO Virginia. Solo exhibition include Whale interactive installation at La Sala Performance/NYC. Multi-sensory Installation design for dementia was semi-finalist in NYU Stern's Entrepreneur Challenge. Her works are in the collection of NOOW.art.
BFA Visual Art, SUNY Purchase
MPS Art & Technology, ITP/NYU.

Which is your medium?
I work with video, sound, installation and performance.

How would you describe your art?
Hinging on stages of my personal transformations, my work culminates emotional and visceral experiences that are intuitive and sensual to explore the subconscious dimensions of reality. Often strongly themed in nature, I work with dance, interactive technology, video, sound and sensory stimulants to make installation, performance and social space depicting an utopian universe.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
My video works have been compared to Pipilotti Rist. I come from a traditional fine arts background, and German Expressionism is one of my favorite artistic movements.

One of your recent artworks
HEART at CADAF 2019

What lead you to the blockchain?
CADAF introduced me to the blockchain community.

What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
Artworks.

By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
I work with NOOW.art and OpenSea.

On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
OpenSea . Noow.art's Instagram

Sonia can be reached via these channels:

Sonia kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on July 2, 2019.
The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on July 4, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed for providing us these insights, Sonia!

Yura Miron

Live performer, VJ, LaserJay, electronic musician, VR-Art/design/animation teacher.

Yura makes use of image processing tools such as Ganbreeder to create moving images that are inspired by science fiction novels and nature. He describes his art as "psychedelic, sci-fi, conscious-expanding, subconscious-mind-manifesting", and when you look at his works, you see even much more in it.

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
Yura Miron

What is your professional background and career?
Live performer, VJ, LaserJay, electronic musician, VR-Art/design/animation teacher.

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
I'm a visionary artist, exploring the new media art technologies, such as: Virtual and Augmented Reality, Generative Adversarial Networks and Audio/Visual synthesis. Inspired by visionary culture, fusion of nature and technology, electronic music and by media-arts in general.

Which is your medium?
VR, AR, GAN, AV-synth.

How would you describe your art?
psychedelic, sci-fi, conscious-expanding, subconscious-mind-manifesting.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?

One of your recent artworks
Central Computer

URL to one of your artworks you love most.
Raw Material-Tropic

What lead you to the blockchain?
I've been creating digital art for years and never had opportunity to actually sell my art. So when I've realised all of the possibilities of the blockchain + art combo, my mind was totally blown away!

Since when are you active in the crypto space?
I've been accepted as a founding artist on R.A.R.E. Art Labs on 4th January 2019

What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
artworks.

Which tools do you use to create your blockchainart?
VR: Gravity Sketch, Tilt Brush, Blocks, Medium, AnimVR. Ganbreeder.app. Adobe PS, AE, PR. Google DeepStyle.

By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
SuperRare, KnownOrigin, R.A.R.E. Art labs.

On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
SuperRare . KnownOrigin . R.A.R.E . DADA

Yura can be reached via these channels:
r

Yura kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on June 25, 2019.
The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on June 25, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed for providing us these insights, Yura!

Ophelia Fu

Artist and illustrator.

Ophelia is one of the few women in the world of blockchain art (as far as we know) and one of the first who appeared in the scene. Her works radiate an attractive melancholy and are among the most sought-after works of art on SuperRare. In one week we'll meet in person. Exciting!

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
Ophelia Fu

What is your professional background and career?
Artist and illustrator.

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
I am a mixed media artist who works globally with other artists and writers with projects and connections formed, or shared, on the blockchain. Presenting the majority of my work on blockchain based platforms, and creating limited-edition tokenized crypto art.

Which is your medium?
Inks and printmaking with digital collage and gifs.

How would you describe your art?
The work explores the human condition, balancing on the fringes between reality and an imagined world. The surreal animated gifs and digital collages take elements created using traditional media such as drawing, printmaking and photography, and combine these with digital media.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
Jacob Epstein's sculpture 'Rock Drill' is a piece that I have visited many times, I think this along with Alberto Giacometti's figurative sculptures have had the most influence on my figurative drawing style. Cinematic influences would be the film Un Chien Andalou.

One of your recent artworks
Breaking Out

URL to one of your artworks you love most.
We Talk We Grow

What lead you to the blockchain?
I started off on blockchain based social media platforms, and then found my way to NFTs.

Since when are you active in the crypto space?
2016.

What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
I create artwork that is tokenized on the blockchain.

Which tools do you use to create your blockchainart?
I work with traditional mediums of ink, paints, printmaking and photography. I then use various graphic editors to develop these into digital collages or animated gifs.

By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
SuperRare, KnownOrigin and MakersPlace.

On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
SuperRare . KnownOrigin . DADA . MakersPlace . Cryptovoxels

Ophelia can be reached via these channels:
STEEMIT

Ophelia kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on June 20, 2019.
The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on June 23, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed for providing us these insights, Ophelia!

XCOPY

Pixel pusher.

When we came across XCOPY's artwork, we thought that this must be what blockchain art is about: Glitched and pixelated moving images on the aesthetic level, and digitally created, distributed and experienced on the structural level. Though we have seen many more blockchain backed artworks in the meantime, we still think that XCOPY's works explore the transition from static art to moving image and from IRL to digital experience of art very well, and can be seen as representative of one of the genres which the blockchain art field is informed by. And we love the fact that XCOPY provided details about his influences and his art here at B.A.D!

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
XCOPY

What is your professional background and career?
Pixel pusher.

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
I create experimental visual art. Usually in GIF format and best experienced in your feed. I hope to be an authentic voice floating on the superficial sea of social media.

Which is your medium?
Pixels on screen.

How would you describe your art?
Dystopian, near future portraits of the apathetic and distracted.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
Growing up, cartoons, toys and video games influenced me more than art. I worshiped my Amiga 500 - playing games like Flashback, Xenon 2 and Syndicate. I’ve always found inspiration in music, books and comedy as much as in art.

One of your recent artworks
You're wasting your life. Literally.

URL to one of your artworks you love most.
Some Asshole

What lead you to the blockchain?
A friend was talking about bitcoin and I got excited.

Since when are you active in the crypto space?
Late November 2017. I bought a small amount of bitcoin and stupidly lost half of it on transaction fees when I transferred it. I got obsessed and eventually read about ways that crypto could be used to create digital art editions.

What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
I’m tokenizing my art as NFTs - I think of them as signed editions. As someone who grew up collecting, it’s exciting to offer digital art as a collectible. I’m interested in the ways NFTs can be used across platforms or within games. I also run XERO Gallery, a crypto art gallery based in the 3D world of CryptoVoxels. Our mission is turn artistic creativity into positive real world action - through charitable donations.

Which tools do you use to create your blockchainart?
Notes. Photoshop. Wacom. MacBook.

By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
Mostly SuperRare and KnownOrigin. I've also used Digital Objects and RARE Art Labs.

Further info you'd like to provide re the creation process?
Everyday I make notes - concepts, titles and to do lists (usually on the tube). This helps me focus when I am at the computer. I don’t like to start with a blank canvas, I open a previous piece in photoshop and paint over it. Often I spend as long in the exporting of a work as in the drawing. I tend to bring the exported GIF back into photoshop several times to paint over. This process creates many variations, snapshots of the evolving piece. The hard part is knowing when to finish or even abandon a piece. I delete my working files regularly and find it helps keep things fresh.

On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
SuperRare . KnownOrigin

XCOPY can be reached via these channels:

XCOPY kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on June 18, 2019.
The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on June 20, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed for providing us these insights, XCOPY!

Jason Bailey

Art nerd

We saw Jason for the first time at the Rare Art Festival, New York, January 2018. This was shortly after the first boom for blockchainart and cryptocollectibles. By then, Jason was already an active participant in discussion around the matter, and soon found his place as blockchain art expert in the field.

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
Artnome

Which company / institution are you representing?
Artnome

What is your professional background and career?
Art nerd.

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
Art has given me a lot so I try to give back.

How would you describe your art?
Cathartic.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
Bosch, Caravaggio, Goya, Homer, Munch, Duchamp, O'Keeffe, Dix, Höch, Tanguay, Rothko, Pollock, Motherwell, Hesse, Bacon, Johns, Frankenthaler, Molnar, Baltz, Tarbell, Saville, Manolo, Barrat.

One of your recent artworks
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuWFfIAFr35/

What lead you to the blockchain?
I was looking for a better way to store provenance.

Since when are you active in the crypto space?
December 2017.

What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
Artnome and DankRares Podcast.

Which tools do you use to create your blockchainart?
I mostly write about tools.

Further info you'd like to provide re the creation process?
https://www.artnome.com/news/2019/2/27/blockchain-art-30-how-to-launch-your-own-blockchain-art-marketplace

On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
SuperRare . Portion . DADA

Jason can be reached via these channels:

Jason kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on April 20, 2019.
The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on May 15, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed for providing us these insights, Jason!

ilan katin

Artist

We first recognized ilan while browsing KnownOrigin.io. His artworks are very different from what is sytlistic ruling these days. Incentive enough for us to invite ilan to give some insights into his work and activites on the blockchain!

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
ilan katin

What is your professional background and career?
I studied art and have worked in a lot of different areas related to computer graphics.

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
I create art work on a daily basis. The material from this ritual of creation allows for a thick and rich compost of ideas and concepts that emerge in the process of assembling the materials together. The common thread of my work throughout the years has been to capture and transform the essence of my drawings. Being able to put some of this work on the blockchain has exposed this work to a new audience and somewhat flowed back to the ideas that I am working with.

Which is your medium?
Acrylic on paper or wood.

How would you describe your art?
My work is mostly non-objective, non-figurative or abstract. I have been in that 'space' for a long time now, although I do some sticker designs for dissemenating what I consider to be positive incantations.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
It's hard to say exactly. But usually music as the strongest influence on me.

One of your recent artworks
HARMONICS OF EMPIRE I

URL to one of your artworks you love most.
NICHE

What lead you to the blockchain?
A combination of curiosity and commerce.

Since when are you active in the crypto space?
Must have been November 2018.

What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
For the moment I think of myself as an 'end user'. But I can expand on that somewhat. I have been through several 'tech trends'. Blockchain to me seems like another one. As long as there are human beings there will be art. I am not 100% sure (nor is anybody for that matter) that blockchain will outlive art. Perhaps that's obvious. Sometimes I get the impression that it is not so I am taking the liberty of stating that here. But stating this is not to belittle the impact that this technology has had for some of us who have jumped in early, although I have to say that I consider myself a latecomer. For me the experience of 'putting art on the blockchain' has had three positive effects: a) I have been able earn some money that allows me to cover some basic necessities, which leads to b) That I am working a bit harder to develop my work in a way that I always wanted to and c) probably more importantly and oft overlooked is that I have met some like minded people. I can't tell you how much a value this small group of people even though I have never met them face to face. I guess I am contributing to the movement by being a part of it in this way.

Which tools do you use to create your blockchainart?
Dada.NYC, Photoshop, Procreate, Cinema4D, Blender and After Effects.

By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
I tokenize on SuperRare, KnownOrigin, MakersPlace and contribute to Dada.NYC

Further info you'd like to provide re the creation process?
The less I think before and while I am doing something the more easily the work emerges.

On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
SuperRare . KnownOrigin . Portion . DADA

ilan can be reached via these channels:

ilan kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on April 18, 2019.
The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on May 14, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed for providing us these insights, ilan!

Cynthia Gayton

Founder of Gayton Law
http://www.gayton-law.com/

It was at the pre-party of #RareAF in January 2018, when we met Cynthia. She was introduced to us as 'lawyer who had an art gallery and hosts a crypto art podcast together with DJ J Scrilla'. Since then, Cynthia has accompanied us on our way through blockchain land.

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
Cynthia Gayton

Which company are you representing?
Gayton Law

What is your professional background and career?
Attorney and educator

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
I have been working with artists and technologists for most of my professional career. Blockchain art is evolving and is several stages beyond when I first got into it. I think that so long as artists and developers (and even lawyers!) work together, some practical solutions to ongoing problems in the art world will be realized. That is a vision of mine - increased legal transaction transparency and reducing transaction risk.

Which is your medium?
Collage, oil

How would you describe your art?
Hmm. I like colors. I also like texture. I like tangible versus intangible. Eclectic is probably the right word.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
There are too many to list here, but for overall artistic professionalism, crypto knowledge depth, and sincere interest, I would have to say cryptograffiti, Rob Myers, Joe Chiappeta and Nanu Berks come to mind as unique contributors. Bea Ramos and Judy Mam helped shape how I think about artistic collaboration and about ethics in art.

One of your recent artworks
Parabola

What lead you to the blockchain?
Learning about smart contracts!

Since when are you active in the crypto space?
I have been involved most heavily on the crypto space since late 2016. I became interested in bitcoin as an alternative to credit cards when I had my art gallery - 2011-2014.

What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
I have had seminars, meet-ups, articles, legal and consulting services in these related fields. I co-hosted a podcast as well as an FM radio show with J Scrilla, dedicated exclusively to crypto art and crypto music until earlier this year - 2019. I have sold my own physical art and have shown one piece at an art show for lawyers. This is the first year that I have offered for sale a crypto art piece.

Anything else you want the community to know?
Participate, get involved, shape your future.

Cynthia can be reached via these channels:
STEEMIT

Cynthia kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on April 17, 2019. The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on May 13, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed, Cynthia!

Judy Mam

Co-founder of DADA
https://dada.nyc

Some of the first purchases on the dada.nyc platform in 2018 and a tweet about it lead us to Judy Mam and Beatriz Ramos - two exceptional personalities with a lot of commitment and passion for their project. We have met several times since then and hope to add many more meetings in the future.

What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
Judy Mam

Which company are you representing?
DADA

What is your professional background and career?
I am a writer and used to be a creative director in advertising.

What lead you to the blockchain?
My company, DADA, a social network where people communicate through drawings creating visual conversations which we tokenize on the Ethereum blockchain.

Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
I'm proud that I can honestly say that with DADA we are doing something that impacts the lives of people in wonderful ways, and that we have created a work of art that involves a global community of artists. I believe art is a human instinct, a human need, and essential to human progress and civilization. Society does not consider it a priority, but art should be an integral part of people's daily lives. Everybody should make art, and everybody should be able to collect art.Technology, and blockchain in particular, offers revolutionary ways by which this can happen. What excites me is precisely that blockchain allows us to broaden our usual mindset and explore ways to be more collaborative and more fair, and find unorthodox but effective solutions for artists.

Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
I grew up in a house where art was appreciated. My parents took us to museums from an early age and they were modest art collectors. My dad was an advisor to collectors. So even though I'm not an artist, I have been around art for as long as I can remember. I like lots of art, from the Renaissance to mostly modern art. I love too many artists to count here. I don't like the artists-marketers like Banksy or Jeff Koons.

One of your recent artworks
https://dada.nyc/portraits?pl=2svCThOzEAfRSuYpaY7fyw#2svCThOzEAfRSuYpaY7fyw

One of your artworks you love most.
https://dada.nyc/pa/78094

Which is your medium?
dada.nyc

By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
ERC 721

On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
DADA

Judy can be reached via these channels:

Judy kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on April 15, 2019. The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on May 12, 2019.
Thank you very much indeed, Judy!