Find my kites and prints at Art for the Cash Poor - a sidewalk tent sale featuring 100+ artists! Buy special gifts for your loved ones here, support local artists,and forget about those big box stores.
June 4th, 2022
12:00 pm - 6:00 pm
N. American Street between Master Street and Oxford Street (1400 and 1500 Blocks).
Find my tent between Jefferson and Oxford Streets!
“Tulip”, screen print
“Breaker”, cut paper
Especially for this event, I am working on a variable edition of screen prints on a white pearlescent paper. Framed and unframed versions will be available for purchase! I am excited to share my tent with Maria Zamora, an artist from the Seattle area! Get details here: https://inliquid.org/aftcp/
I exhibited an NFT version of this tulip design during Philly Tech Week in "Connecting Through the Metaverse: An NFT Art Exhibition". I'd like the share my reason for making this image:
Through cut paper I depict the bulb and blossom of a tulip with a QR code pattern on the petals. The title "Breaker" is a nod to the broken bulbs that bore striped tulip petals, fetching the highest prices at the peak of the Dutch tulip investment bubble. Dutch tulip mania of the 17th century has been compared to the current frenzy to create and invest in NFTs. While the tulip market collapse only harmed investors caught holding the bulbs at the end of the craze, the current NFT bubble contributes to the global environmental impact of mining cryptocurrencies. I recall the words of Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo, from a 2018 exhibition at Moore College of Art; "art is the fourth-largest black market in the world, after drugs, guns, and diamonds." Enormous societal resources are required to protect, authenticate, and maintain a work of art valued in the millions. Who decides which artworks are the most valuable? How can we collectively choose to allocate our resources to benefit the most people and conserve our diverse cultural heritages equitably? Are NFTs adding to the problems already existent in physical art markets? These questions persisted as I learned more about NFTs and created my image.
My thanks to InLiquid and Second State Press for making my work possible.