Category: photography

Atmospherics Twenty-Eight

Artist: celadoor

Inexpensive, yes. But never cheap.


A pseudo-random pick from my collections comes from the artist celadoor, who bills his works as “more of a vibe than a series.” He’s actually a good friend & confidant in the space, and offers a very level-headed approach whenever discussing the latest trends in the Tezos-based art world. In describing his process, he offers this:

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using a smartphone camera, a light source, and my finger. Most work includes paper currency as a reflective surface.

-Celadoor

A striking image of muted, golden sunlight, with cloud-like formations bleeding into a mountain range below, or, perhaps, more clouds, Atmospherics Twenty-Eight is, as you likely guessed, the 28th item in the artist’s Atmospherics series. Released August 5th, 2021, it was priced extremely (or ridiculously) affordable at just 0.2 Tz (around 0.65 $USD at the time). And yet, incredibly, many of them sat unsold for nearly a full month.

Prolific artists are often misunderstood by the more “serious” art crowd, as those collectors investors prefer limited pieces, sold selectively, the elusive exclusivity of the “Super Rare”. In remaining so prolific and also relatively affordable, celadoor has catered to the true collector here in keeping a healthy supply of easily accessible artworks available through and through. Although, lately, it is getting harder and harder to find a celadoor piece near a 0.2tz price. Remember kids, just because it is affordable now does not mean it’ll stay that way. In the case of Atmospherics Twenty-Eight, all copies sold, but you can still get one — now at about 12 tez.

Follow celadoor on Twitter, find his works on Objkt and (soon) on fx(hash)!

Fog Over Gowanus

Artist: Kate Shifman

With the recent crash of all things crypto-related, I thought I’d revisit one of my first purchased NFTs. By May of 2018, the price of most crypto was falling from recent highs, into a lull that would continue for the next full year and a half.

Around then, I discovered Fog Over Gowanus on one of the first NFT marketplaces, the now-defunct RARE Art Labs, an early home to such OG crypto artists as XCOPY, Hackatao and others. I have a background in photography, and really loved the image of the morning fog over the Brooklyn skyline here, highlighting the since-removed Kentile Floors sign in it’s original, industrial splendor.

Although RARE Art Labs is gone, I still own the token to the artwork in my Ethereum wallet. While this token proves provenance, date of purchase and price, it does not link to any known image of the artwork. In 2018, there was no easy way to store items on-chain, and the cloud-based IPFS wasn’t heavily used.

Luckily, I saw the above photograph while scanning a 2018 blog entry in Artnome, Jason Bailey’s fantastic, long-running art blog. I have two other pieces of art from RARE that aren’t so lucky — I haven’t been able to track down any high-res images of them.

But perhaps a solution will be found. Jason has gathered with some friends and started ClubNFT, a service that will eventually allow users to download copies of their NFT collections to their own devices. I greatly look forward to its release! At long last, I will finally be able to store all of the images onto a few tried and true SyQuest drives for all eternity.