First! If you’ve found a heart congratulations! I’m so so happy for you and hope you found one that you connect with and that it makes you smile!
If you’d like to collect the NFT DM me on Twitter @jenjustjen3 or email me at jensalittleloopy@gmail.com. I’ll be minting the claimed NFTs and sending them to everyone’s wallets in the days after I return from Miami.
Let me tell you a little about these collections and how this project came to be.
#HeartBasel 2021
As one of a handful of fiber artists making NFTs, during Miami Art Week 2021 I wanted to find a new way to play with connecting physical works with NFTs. I decided to do a physical airdrop of crocheted hearts and leave them scattered about Miami during my adventures there.
The corresponding NFTs were minted on Kalamint and the people who found the hearts were also gifted the NFT artwork (if they claimed it!). One of the cool parts of this adventure was that one of the hearts made its way back to Chris, the then-CEO of Kalamint…and I was lucky enough to get to have lunch with him while I was down there!
Twenty-five crochet hearts were dropped at MIA, in Ubers, on fire hydrants, by trashcans, at events/galleries, pretty much wherever I saw an opportunity to not get caught.
One person asked for one. One was gifted openly. One was secretly gifted.
I know who is holding nine of the hearts. I was already connected with all but one of these people. The one person I met through this project didn’t have any crypto yet.
Last year I minted all of these before I went to Basel. Some were editions and some were 1/1s.
This year they’re all 1/1s and will be minted after the person who finds the heart claims the NFT.
#HeartBasel 2022
This past year I’ve dug deep into mixed media and collage. I haven’t minted much work beyond GMs – most of the work I’ve created this year has been about experimentation and learning. I was lucky to be able to show my collage work IRL for the first time in August. I’ve completed a LOT of canvases but am still working through what I’d like to do with them.
When I thought about this year’s #HeartBasel, I wanted it to represent the work I’ve done over the past year. Cutting apart mixed media canvases and turning them into smaller collage artworks made sense. But I also wanted to be able to pull my NFT story through this collection so I picked a couple of canvases that are important to my story here.
Each of these canvases mean something different to me.
Just for Fun
There’s no deep meaning behind the work in this collection – I was just playing around with 1950s children’s workbooks and text because it made me happy. It’s important to slow down and enjoy the creative process without worrying about the outcome.
Art happily and with wild abandon as often as possible.
This collection is made from pieces of a poured painting I made years ago which was never minted. I’ll be minting these hearts on Tezos/Rarible.
Creating poured paintings was kind of my gateway into playing with paint so it’s fitting that these hearts get minted on the first platform where I minted work when I arrived in NFT land.
Insecure Heart
What happens when a color and detail maxi decides to stop trying so hard?
One of my rules of engagement is that I won’t hustle for approval. I found myself doing a lot of that this fall as I untangled some creative and relationship thorniness. I questioned my worth — as a woman, a mother, a partner, a child, a creative — and I rarely felt like I was measuring up.
Losing myself in cutting out the tiniest bits of security envelopes may have saved me. I had to slow down, breathe, and focus.
When I created these hearts I reached back into those moments where I knew nothing but the process, which paralleled what I felt when I created the canvas on which these hearts are built.
Sometimes all we have is our process and that has to be enough.
This collection is made from pieces of Clucking Hen, which was originally minted on Objkt. These hearts will also be minted on Objkt.
Clucking Hen was a texture study I minted as a statement on the hot mess that was the HEN implosion. The art was messy. My head was messy. And in the spirit of all things HEN I threw spaghetti against the wall to see whether it stuck. It did.
Help Wanted
I wasn’t sure where to go with these at first. While I was mulling it over I got a nudge from the universe to go dig around in an antique shop during lunch. I found these incredible magazines from 1933-1935. They’re full of advertisements for employment “opportunities,” correspondence courses, and of course a million ways to increase your manliness – having a workshop filled with tools wasn’t enough back then – you had Charles Atlas to compete with.
These ads made me think about how hard the crypto bear market has impacted artists and projects in the NFT space. Some of us never left our day jobs, some of us returned to them, some of us are really struggling. A very lucky few are thriving.
I wondered what would happen if I created help wanted ads for artists just in case they need something to do while waiting for the next bull market. Hope these ideas help!
This collection is made from pieces of Weeping Widow and the Orphan Flower (and I wrote about it here). Since the original art was minted on ETH, for consistency’s sake these hearts will be minted on my LOOPY Manifold contract.
Weeping Widow and the Orphan Flower was painted over (by design!).
Its final iteration before I cut it apart was inspired by NFTLisa’s encouragement to play around with thumbnails before painting on canvas. I LOVED the result but never minted it because it felt like an exploration rather than a finished piece.
I want to highlight something about the Help Wanted collection which if we didn’t know each other this time last you you probably wouldn’t know about.
My intent has always been to destroy this painting.
I gessoed over it.
I painted over it.
I cut it into twelve hearts which I’m sending out into the universe with love.
The healing process is complete and it’s also just starting. Who knows what work those hearts might get incorporated into once they leave my hands? This is the most beautiful thing.
I’m incredibly grateful to get to scoot around Miami during Art week again this year and beyond excited to reconnect with friendos IRL!
If you see Kevin be sure to say hello!
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