(NOTE: An abridged version of this interview/essay was originally published in Maine Art Scene)
The traditional art gallery model that has served plein air painters, mixed media artists, and fine art photographers for generations still reigns supreme in Maine; but change is in the wind.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that there will always be a meaningful place for the local brick and mortar art gallery, especially in Maine. For many people, the physical process of seeing, discovering, and purchasing art in a traditional gallery setting is the only experience in which they are interested. It’s what they know. It’s time honored. It’s familiar.
I come from a very traditional art background. The Ogunquit Art Colony exerted a powerful influence on my development as an artist. For almost a decade, I lived in the historic Thompson Farmhouse (1750) located just outside of Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine. I’m also a juried member-artist of the Ogunquit Art Association / Barn Gallery — Maine’s original artists’ group (established in 1928).”
Many collectors of my Maine-based work, and many of my fellow Maine-area artists, are very used to operating within a classic, rigid, and formal art world structure. Maine tends to be a place where change is slowly integrated. That’s part of what makes Maine a magical place. That’s also part of what drives me to bring my traditional Maine artwork into these new formats, onto these new platforms, and in front of the new audiences gathered there. I love the contrast that exists between “what we’ve always done” and “what the future holds”.
We may be in the early days, but there is a growing digital movement wherein artists and collectors of all ages are embracing compelling technological advancements which I believe are certain to have enriching, positive, and enduring impacts on the way art is created, appreciated, collected, and experienced.”
NFTs are still a fairly nascent technology. Some people don’t understand the concept. For them, NFTs are a polarizing topic, but there’s no reason for negativity to become a part of the conversation.
And for those who have only heard about NFTs peripherally, it’s important to educate them that there’s more to the world of NFTs than the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
In the most basic terms, NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are just a digital mechanism allowing someone to prove they were part of a transaction. NFTs can (and most likely will) be used for verification, tracing, and auditing of ownership data of any kind; whether it is artwork, property and car titles, supply chain information, any types of financial assets, and much more.
In the use-case of digital art, the digital records connected to an NFT are capable of showing when a specific piece of digital art was ‘minted’ (or attached to the NFT), plus the provenance of that piece. Who created it? Who bought it? When did they buy it? What did they pay for it? Who owns it now? These are the same questions gallerists, curators, and collectors ask about physical artwork all of the time. Connecting any piece of artwork, whether physical or digital, to an NFT just helps remove some of that guesswork.
As far as the concept of digital art; both digital payments and the tangible ownership of digital goods are ideas that younger generations have grown up with and paradigms that the majority of them have fully internalized. Paypal. Venmo. Cryptocurrency. MP3s. Apps. Ebooks. Digital pets. Virtual clothing and other tools available for purchase in video games. The list goes on and on.
But it’s not just young people who purchase digital goods. Almost everyone I know owns some type of software program that they exchanged money for, whether they realize it or not. A computer operating system. A copy of Microsoft Word or Excel. These are digital goods. They are functional digital goods which deliver value in terms of the work and productivity one can accomplish with them.
Not all of life is work and productivity. Some of life is poetry, and music, and visual art; and in this world where our daily screen time hours are always increasing, shouldn’t we all be making an attempt to strike some balance in our digital worlds? Shouldn’t we bring some fun, beauty, and philosophical thinking into our digital lives?
For artists, NFTs represent a new way to exhibit and sell artwork. A new way to be in touch with the work they create and the full journey that work takes. A new way to reach interested audiences. A new way to receive royalties on the resale of their work on the secondary market. Most important, a new way to forge a deeper connection with their individual collectors.
NFT artworks are digital goods we can own, display, and appreciate for their aesthetic characteristics.
It doesn’t end there. With new NFT advancements like token gating and unlockable content functionality, artists have the resources to add more value (and additional utility) to any NFT they offer for sale by offering the purchaser special perks such as early access to newly released artworks, additional content related to the artwork, physical copies of the digital artwork, exclusive invitations to a community or event, and/or much, much more. Trust me, you will definitely be hearing lots more about NFT token gating over the next few years.
Even right now, the creators and collectors of NFTs inhabit something that is still almost like an underground art scene. The majority of traditional collectors and artists haven’t dabbled in the NFT market yet; it remains, for the present moment, a space primarily characterized by early adopters. These early days are quickly coming to a close.
Everyday there is more technology. There are more advancements. More investments. More adoption. More utility. More value propositions. More intuitive user interfaces. It’s exciting to be alive during this era, to witness these changes, to be a small part of these changes.
It may take a little while longer for the collectors of my work to more fully embrace the NFT and digital art spaces, but I plan on continuing to offer my work there moving forward. I plan on finding ways to reward any early collectors who follow me there. And maybe I’ll make some new friends along the way.
CLICK HERE to see Eric J. Taubert’s inaugural NFT collection: “Dreary Immaculate: Coastal Maine”
