K017G retweeted
What a week it's been! It has had me taking mental trips back to 2021, when I liked a Monster I found on hic et nunc, a site I knew nothing about, and sent a stranger a DM asking to learn more. Since then that platform and several others have come and gone. What hasn't changed: @DesLucrece and the people who showed up around him are still here, and nearly everything wild that has happened to me in this space since spawned from that one DM.
I've watched the Monsters Discord server lose its mind as Sotheby's lots beat estimate one after another. I've stood in front of his Madonna of the Garden at Christie's. I walked into @museumartlight in Kansas and his work filled the room. A "Linux guy" with two kids and a guy who draws monsters do not end up in the same chat every day for five years by accident. Somewhere in there it stopped being a collector and an artist and became two friends who kept daring each other.
The dares are the part people see: burn this to get that, hold all three and a Spawn might show up, guess the secret command for access, set up a Bitcoin wallet for the first time because 150 BitMON are about to land there ... and just this week, back a Spawn on @token_works' Fake World Assets and decide whether to pull it or wait for it to evolve.
What makes those dares fun instead of stressful is the boring work underneath: a snapshot that is right, a role that updates itself, an answer at 2 AM when Des is finally asleep. When the plumbing holds, a drop gets to be a game. When it does not, it is homework with a reputation attached.
@Rhynotic and I go way back too. We have built tools together, shared infrastructure, and he's been a great source of inspiration for me in pushing the limits of what's possible for Monsters. His platform, FWA, gave Des room to design a game none of us could predict, and gave the rest of us a drop that was fun again.
This week Discord was insane! Thirty people walking one person through what just happened to their Spawn, and how to get it out because it had evolved. Everyone online at midnight for the Secret Rares to see what they got. It felt like the early days again, and I had forgotten how much fun this was supposed to be. I'd happily do it again for the next five years.
@DesLucrece thank you for trusting a stranger from the internet with your work and your brand, for every dare since, and for becoming a cornerstone of my life. Best friend is the only word that will ever fit! 💚💙
K017G retweeted
Have enjoyed watching the rise of Lucrece, proud to have your work in the collection ❤️🔥
What a sweet surprise! A pleasure and an honor to be featured in Issue #213 of the Medici Minutes. Thank you, my friend, @CozomoMedici 🍷⚔️
K017G retweeted
222 BitMON by @DesLucrece, now together in the collection tonight along with the 1/5 legendary The Ossuary. The other 4 owned by amazing stewards @osseneth and @OttoSuwen
Each is a fully on-chain animated work, made by hand and built to live permanently on Ethereum.
Proud to support you, Des.
Excited to have you come to Upstate NY in the coming weeks to discuss an epic commission for the Digital Art Museum project !
K017G retweeted
Many people tend to forget that she didn’t truly receive widespread recognition until she was in her 60s. She had a moment in the spotlight for her performances in her 30s, but I think the years that followed were very difficult for her. I was told by one of her relatives that she went through a lot before leaving for New York, but I’ll keep what I heard in my own memory.
Still, she kept creating. We tend to care too much about how our work is being received right now. I’m no different. But it takes a very long time for your work to truly be recognized.
There’s no need to rush. We still have plenty of time.
I've been sitting with @DesLucrece's "The Horizon" for a while now. The second piece in the "Akesha" series is one of his quieter, more contemplative red pieces. It features the protagonist sitting along the shore with a taller figure standing behind, both with their backs turned to the viewer, as they watch the sun recede into the horizon against the cloudy backdrop. You're pulled into the scene, and it's hard not to remember similar scenes from your own memory while envisioning what the future might bring.
Everything I've written so far treats the horizon as a flat line: something you place high or low, something that recedes or closes. However, as Sugimoto was standing on a cliff in Newfoundland in 1982, watching a sunset coincide with a full moon rise, he felt like a figure in a Caspar David Friedrich painting, except he wasn't photographing the back-turned figure; he was the figure.
"The horizon is not a straight line, but a segment of a great arc." From high enough, the line curves. As Sugimoto wrote, "there remains a great divide between comprehending the world and being able to explain what we ourselves are." No matter how far science has come, art fills the gaps it can't. The horizon doesn't ask us to choose between hope and loss. It shifts with altitude, with where we stand when we look.
ALT Caribbean Sea, Yucatan - Hiroshi Sugimoto
When I first viewed "The Horizon", I felt only melancholy. To say the past year has been difficult would be an understatement. But as I return to it, I notice details I didn't see before: the twinkling stars, the shimmering water, the boats as beginnings of new journeys.
I asked earlier which reading I see: hope or loss? Today I see both, held in the same frame, and I don't need them to resolve. The same work viewed in one year, five years, ten years from now will carry different weight as I understand more. The horizon doesn't move. I do. Therein lies the value of art.