March 19, 2022

“Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world; a diverse range of (and products of) human activities involving creative imagination to express technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.” Wikipedia

As a potential patron, I hope you can appreciate the abstract look I bring to cryptograms along with the hidden elements that can be unveiled through the interaction with a digital file. These elements, along with my trademark linear graphics, set my work apart from any other designer. And then there is availability to consider. Due to my age, I will be able to produce only a limited number of pieces. I don’t employ AI programs to do any encoding. The creation of each piece is very time consuming.

As an owner, if you so choose, you can assign the unlocking of a composition’s secrets to a friend, family member, colleague or group. Someone will enjoy the challenge. I hope your primary consideration, as a discerning collector, will be the rarity of the piece and its development history.

My vision came to life after participating in a bar challenge – 1972. Based on that encounter I’ve been refining my designs for fifty years. During that period I never had a show. Nor did I offer a piece for sale. My vision for producing larger pieces was missing a crucial element. It wasn’t until a 2020 epiphany that the final component was discovered. This is all documented in My Story.

Vertically presented characters that are read on a horizontal plane to decipher a code are my trademark. In addition, I incorporate blended elements within the graphic that can only be discovered by owners possessing the original, digital file.

I’m now seventy-three years old as of June 2022. Going forward, I will be able to produce only a limited number of pieces. Encoding and element placement are extremely time consuming.

The NFT arena has people producing thousands of pieces, many of them being auto-generated by text to image generators. The producers of these works are called ‘generative’ artists. A more recent definition is prompters. Will their pieces become rare and extremely valuable? That’s for time to determine.

This new generation of ‘artists’ is overloading the marketplace hoping for their pot of gold. A popular trend these days is collectibles, a character modified thousands of times by an AI program. I read on twitter about one individual who is thinking about creating 4 million variants of an image. What a collection! Bored Apes and crypto punks were at the forefront of this craze. Now thousands are trying to copy their success. Why invest in ‘artwork’ that takes literally no time to produce?

I was working on linear graphic elements using a pencil, paper and a straight edge well before computers were available. I consider myself an innovator. Each piece of mine takes time to produce. Depending on the complexity – days, weeks or months.

I must now realistically consider my options. Articles have been written about an artist’s obligation to social media to keep their stories alive. I’m too old and have no desire to spend my days, what’s left of them, glued to social media. I’ve decided that the best way to keep my story alive is to produce Trithemian Web™ Cryptograms. Let them speak for themselves.  

Are you looking for an addition to your collection that can be considered extremely rare? I invite you to read my thoughts on that subject.

My work checks all the boxes discussed on Binance.com – Rarity, Utility and Tangibility.

Artnet: “Rarity is determined by the frequency with which a work by an artist appears on the market, or the number of a specific type of work that is currently available from a particular period in an artist’s career.” That says it all.