The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Art is a funny sort of investment, let’s say that right off the get-go. It’s worth what anybody is willing to pay for it. If you’re an artist whose work is actually collected as a hedge against recessions, inflation, wars, disasters and the coming apocalypse, you really can’t lower your prices when the bank account dips too low, not if you want to keep your investors happy. Me, I don’t worry too much about this part of the art game. I charge by the square foot for original designs in glass, a price I haven’t changed since 1995, one that’s cheaper than the stained glass shops in the area. The obvious corollary to this is that, well gee, maybe I’m selling product, not art. But let’s not get sidetracked, okay?

This week Christie’s auction house sold a digital painting for 69 million dollars plus change. For what was advertised as an NFT, which for you poor readers living in the comfortable past, means a non fungible token. Huh? you ask and I say yah shure, u betcha, a non fungible token, where ya been? An NFT is basically artistic crypto-currency, see? And don’t say Huh? It’s the future and the future is here.

A guy you never heard of named Beeple is now the 3rd richest living artist after his first sale ever. Not bad. Or is it? Bad, I mean. This Beeple is a graphic designer who lives in Charleston, South Carolina. The idea behind the “Everydays” project is to create art daily, no matter how complex or simple, he said.

“These pictures are all done from start to finish every day,” he declared on his website. “The purpose of this project is to help me get better at different things.” Well now, he certainly got better at selling his work, and hopefully maybe even fine-tuned his graphic art. I mean, he has 5000 images tucked away in that digital painting, some maybe good, some maybe not, and if you owned the painting you could scroll through and find a few you loved and a few you wish you could photoshop out.

Of course I’m trying to figure out a way to digitize my own glassworks. Jam every doodle and design into a collage that would fill my own computer’s hard drive in a South End minute. I was worried at the beginning I wouldn’t know how to make a non fungible token since I wasn’t really sure what an NFT is, but then I realized most of even the non-digitized stuff I have collecting dust down at the glass shack is basically non fungible now since obviously it appears to be unsaleable. Keep a close watch on Christie’s. I’ll be there soon. 4th richest living artist? Why not?? Bid high!!

Hits: 18