'Raw Light Express' - Issue #3

Shining light on favorite finds and the Art of Art to calm the mind! Artists, collectibles, community, occasional deep thoughts. Welcome new subscribers to issue #3!

“For Who Art Thou” - Flying stealth under the NFT radar on Known Origin is a little piece of seamlessly looping motion art for Black & White lovers. This is the most accessibly priced work I’ll ever release at just Ξ0.03 (about US$100) in an edition of 100. One day you’ll be glad you got one of these (This is not financial advice).

Violetta Melnikova - aka ‘Eye Above Sky’.

While her 1/1’s on Known Origin are now rising beyond of my reach… I’ve been collecting Violetta’s full deck of Oracle Cards on Opensea for months now. Released weekly, the full set of 27 is very reasonably priced at about 0.0165 eth in editions of 25 on a bonding curve price incrementally (a certain someone called Mel Tal always beats me to the first one!) They consist of beautifully animated scenes of symbolism and mysticism.

Violetta is one of the hardest working artists around and watching the trajectory of her success is exciting. A few little known facts about Violetta too… she’s comes from being a tattoo artist and may be found deadlifting massive weights while listening to hardcore Russian street rap! 😉

Her bio explains the diversity and power in her work perfectly… “Every work is inviting viewer to reconnect with the natural forces within: with fire, water, sun and moon…ancient spirits that are guiding us through this existence. My paintings are inspired by traveling and learning ancestral arts, native traditions and cosmo-vision of different cultures. The story of finding peace with own nature, with everything that is - story about coming back to the center: to the own heart and heart of the universe.”

Another must see collection is her Matryoshka Dolls featuring an incredible range of Russian dolls containing everything from unicorns to buds of weed. They’re playful and so very collectible. I was lucky to have a custom Matryoshka made for my 5yo daughter who fell in love with this collection… see below.

Ethereals revealed this week and did not disappoint… we knew it would be good but it’s even better than I thought! The artwork by Jimmy Danko is an absolute gold standard of what works great for a collectibles drop and the Ethereals team have done such a great job building an awesome community around it!

Super Shiba Club by the awesome Suzy who I remember from her first ever NFT drop of a cute little dollar bill with a wiggly bubble butt! Yep she has an infectiously quirky style as well as an infectious laugh! I bought #862 thanks to someone kindly offering to buy and hold one for me as the floor rose quick after mint. The floor has dipped a bit so now if a good time to buy secondary and I expect (NFA) this will rise again with the likes of the Cool Cats artist buying them and tweeting his praise as well as 888 buying a bunch off secondary.

Art in Motion NYC - alas I didn’t make it into this exhibition but I’m excited to see many of my fellow Known Origin friends are in such as Jasmine Mansbridge, Gassan Aquel and Mister Goldie!

The exhibition founded by Eric (Motivate) Spivak… takes over Penn St Station in NYC with billboards and ad space Penn station exhibiting 88 pieces created by 88 different artists linking NYC commuters via QR code to buy NFTs on Opensea. It’s being run as somewhat of an experiment to see if the public can be driven to buy digital art via NFTs from a busy public space. The art will be sold via a collection on Opensea.

ImnotArt Gallery - is a Chicago gallery dedicated to digital art & NFTs and they currently have on rotation a number of my fellow Known Origin artists such as Mister Goldie (also selected for Art in Motion) & Trent North.

Upcoming

Still ‘relatively’ accessible on secondary:

Goblin Laboratory - Anyone into Goblins? This is damn cool art… the video in their Discord shows that before mint you’ll receive Brain (Mint Pass I think) which unlocks a set of elements/traits that you can drag and drop on an online editor to place, resize, move forward and back on the canvas… to essentially create your own unique composition before minting. Love that idea!