Selling 130 Poetry NFTs: The story of #desertminis, an unlikely poetry/painting project
A written history of my NFT journey as a traditional artist and writer
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On May 18, 2021 I minted my first Desert Mini (#desertminis bc #techy), a poetry and painting NFT project about my life in the desert. The goal of the project was to raise money to self-publish my first poetry book, but more on that later.
To date, in the year and change after, I have sold 130 of them for a combined 6.5eth, or about $7,000 today or ~$30,000 before the crypto market crashed. As far as I know, #desertminis has become one of the most (quietly) successful poetry projects in the NFT space and perhaps the only project of its kind (art, writing, and funding a book). Here is the story behind it β the past, present, and future of the project.
The Context: A Very Uninspiring NFT Landscape
I minted (created) my first NFT in early 2021 and was amongst the first βtraditionalβ artists (i.e. someone whose practice was primarily studio and not computer/digitally-based) to enter the space. I immediately sought out others and my first friends were other oil painters and abstractionists, many of whom I profile in βThe Case for Fine Art NFTs.β
At the time, the overwhelming trend was pixelated art as well as super maximalistic animations in bright colors. This was a months before Bored Apes launched, which kicked off the PFP (profile pic) craze that has been widely covered in the media. Thatβs how early it was! The wild, wild west!
Amidst all this, I was selling images of my abstract paintings β an exception, not the rule still, but even rarer then. The base price for most things was 0.1eth, or at the time, around $120. Editioned NFTs (i.e. selling numbered multiples of the same image) were still a thing back then, and I sold quite a few on my BLOOM collection on Opensea.
I even sold two digital + physical pairs of abstract art, like the one above, on Foundation β i.e., the buyer got both the NFT and the physical canvas. While much more common now, in March 2021, I hadnβt seen another studio-based artist ship original canvases. Both of those sales were around 1.5eth each, which by then was around $4000, by far the highest I had ever sold a painting for. As you can see, for an emerging and debatably struggling artist, NFTs were becoming extremely compelling.
Itβs worth adding that I was originally extremely skeptical of the NFT space. I heard about it in late 2020 and it took me 3 or 4 months to get comfortable with the idea of selling jpegs of my work, especially as someone so dedicated and so in love with creating and seeing art in real life. But at the time, I was also getting more and more engaged with the realities of being a self-represented artist and what I saw as a huge gap in both financial/business skills in artists and financial opportunity for artists. As I poked around the NFT space I saw story after story of artists across all mediums sharing that they were meaningfully getting paid for their work for the first time in their careers β I was intrigued, if not inspired. And very quickly as I jumped in, I found the same.
Sure, there were stories of speculation and people trying to make a quick buck, but I had the shocking experience of the opposite β people were not only collecting my work in the βmediumβ of NFTs, they were actually engaging with it. I had collectors messaging me telling me the image moved them, replying to my tweets and sharing my work and actually interested in dialogue in a way that was more consistent and meaningful than what I had found on Instagram.
I was hooked.
That being saidβ¦
Even then, I knew my work was the exception not the rule. March turned to April, and next thing I knew, the age of the PFP project was upon us. Late April 2021, the now infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club launched and the months that followed saw the space flooded with a massive amount of cartoon animal-like projects, with an even more massive amount of money that were pouring into them.
I hated this.
I thought they were ugly and low effort.
I mounted my tiny anti-PFP soap box and complained to my tiny amount of Twitter followers.
I thought it was an abomination and the root of all evil and an insult to art (the drama).
I have since gotten off my high horse and notably missed out on the ability to make huge sums of money. I know someone who sold their Bored Ape to buy an Airstream and open their own store. That is one of my dreams.
Pesky morals. Pesky judgment. Pesky tiny soap box.
Anyway. I was definitely not making seven figures β not even six figures, but with a couple 1.5eth sales under my belt I was also not doing poorly. However, success can be a prison of its own and my high early sales (1.5eth) started to feel like an unapproachable number to new collectors, especially as Ethereum, the main cryptocurrency for NFTs, was increasing in USD$ value.
For fine artists, the standard βtypeβ of NFT to launch is a 1/1 β i.e., a single, standalone piece that doesnβt sit in a larger collection. You can think of these like paintings but instead of hanging on a wall, hanging on a website. 1/1s typically do not have some of of the gamified aspects common to other NFT projects, such as traits that can be rarer or more common, setting pieces apart from each other in a collection (and there for making certain pieces in a collection more desirable). For example, the red eyes in the above Bored Ape is a βrareβ trait.
1/1s also are just fewer in number β whereas many of these PFP projects were 10,000 pieces, a 1/1 isβ¦ well, 1. The implication being that a PFP artist can quickly get to a community of up to 10K collectors whereas a 1/1 artist is building community at a much slower clip.
In the NFT space, art is inherently communal. Everything is transparent so you can see who (or at least which wallet) is buying what and for how much. Collectors like to promote the artist they collect, so it is not uncommon to announce a purchase of a NFT. From a purely capitalistic standpoint, this theoretically serves to increase the value of the NFT β you are marketing on behalf of the artist and benefitting from the increase. From a social standpoint, this serves as a flex β you get the recognition for buying something desirable or rare, not unlike buying and using a luxury handbag. From a personal standpoint, many collectors also become friends with their artists, and I know for a fact that at least some portion of the collector community legitimately wants artists to succeed.
When so much of the NFT space is about building a community of collectors, fine artists launching expensive 1/1s can be at a loss β by definition, you have fewer pieces at higher prices, limiting your exposure and the number of people who can support you. What you have to believe is that fewer pieces = higher prices = more exclusive = more desirable. Sound familiar? It should, because it has big traditional art world energy and that, for better or worse, was and is not particularly my vibe.
Art should be communal. Art a channel through which personal truths are revealed and I have found that the most personal β the moments in our life that are most beautiful, most painful, most gripping β are often the ones that are also the most universal. Heartbreak, love, loss, the dark night of the soul. Finding wonder in nature, disappointment. It is through the knowing of ourselves that we ultimately, paradoxically, get to know others. We develop empathy and understanding, first from our own roots and then through a branch system that reaches out and touches the next tree, the next person. This experience of life should be shared.
I live alone in the desert but I want my art to be seen and I want it to be in the hands of those moved by it. I want those that love my art to have it. And because of this, I have a back and forth argument in my head about pricing. I donβt think art should be free, artists should make a living β and a good one. A very good one. The process of making art is fulfilling but personally grueling and it is so much more time than the hours when the proverbial paintbrush is touching the canvas β it is the life that leads up to that moment. But I really find myself wondering, when if at all should art ever be priced in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars? I think art should be in the thousands, for sure. To make $100K an artist would have to sell 100 paintings at $1000 each. And that is just topline revenue. Itβs a struggle. But even $1000 already cuts out so many from owning art. This is a whole nother essay for another time.
Which is all to say, I donβt really jive with the rarity for higher prices idea. It flies in the face of the idea of art as communal. There is somewhere in between that I am looking for. All of this was swirling in my head as I entered late spring/summer 2021, and it still is swirling today. I asked myself, βWhere could I go as a traditional artist in the NFT space that was both conceptually interesting, personally exciting, and opened the possibility of a larger community of engaged collectors?β
The Inspiration: A Second Life in the Desert
On the personal front, I had moved back in with my parents 6mo prior and I was certifiably going crazy. I was making origami TikToks for godβs sake! Send help!! I had bought a piece of land in Joshua Tree around the same time (Fall 2020) and it was becoming increasingly clear that building a home and art studio from scratch would take years. I was desperate to get to the desert full-time but the housing market was crazy and only getting crazier and it didnβt seem in the cards. Speak it out into the universe though β ask and you shall receive.
No less than a day after I told my dad there were, βabsolutely no more small houses in my price rangeβ on the market, the realtor I worked with to buy the land listed a 950 sq. ft. home less than a 10m drive from where my land sat. The house was definitely a fixer upper but solid enough to move into, and in my build budget. I saw it the next day and about 3 weeks later I had keys. It was that quick.
On the art front, I was heavily engaged with the idea of NFTs as a βmedium.β What aspects were unique to the NFT that werenβt present in a physical canvas and how could they contribute to my practice?
I am of the belief that if you are a practicing artist in 2022 and not meaningfully engaging with tech, you are selling yourself and our contemporary moment short.
The media and the art world might pit the two against each other β digital vs. physical, tech vs. studio β but there is power in the merging of the two. From an art historical perspective, there is example of example of the rise of a new βtechnologyβ and the rejection of it by βtraditionalβ artists who didnβt have the foresight to see it as a legitimate medium. In the renaissance, sculpture was looked down upon by fresco. At the turn of the 21st century, photography was regarded as βcheatingβ painting. Now, we know both are considered art forms worthy of the most prestigious museums and largest auctions. Why not digital, then?
Back to NFTs β an aha moment for me was minting a large painting and realizing it looked terrible in X by X square area given to it by a platform like Opensea. The effect of the work, so detailed in person, was reduced to a tiny square. It just didnβt translate. Whether the physical was 4 feet or 4 inches it occupied the same amount of screen space. Something tiny IRL was given the same amount of real estate as something huge IRL.
Lightbulb β Aha.
The Execution: A βDailyβ Poetry & Painting Project
A love letter to watercolor paintingβ¦
I had recently started watercolor painting in an attempt to add a medium that was a little more portable than oil painting to my practice β and I was in love.
There is little more intimate than painting, especially painting small. You are right there with the paper and the paint, seeing in slow motion how it moves and interacts, often with little to no input of your own. With watercolor painting, there is an extra layer of magic and release. Unlike oil paint, which goes exactly where you tell it with your brush, watercolor instead defers primarily to the presence of water. The more water you have on your brush, the lighter your paint color is. Put a drop of water directly on the paint dish and you can make a thick and opaque ink. Put water on the paper, and the paint spreads to the tiny puddleβs edges as soon as you touch the tip to wet medium. Add a second color to a wet area, and you can get a tie dye or blended effect. Drop water onto wet paint and new effect occurs. You get so much with just one color, paper, and water.
There is physics to watercolor painting. Gravity and surface tension, dilution and opacity. As an oil painter, I often push the edges of the medium especially in regards to dilution and opacity. In watercolor, I found a medium where what was previously experimental was instead foundational to the nature of the paint.
And all of this was happening on 1.5β x 1.5β squares, on a set of imperfect, embossed gridded paper that I happened to throw in my basket at checkout when I bought my paint set.
I was making these sheets of tiny watercolor paintings and realizing they wouldnβt sell in real life, or maybe they would, but when compared to a $1000+ oil painting, a 6β x 6β watercolor paper seemed to pale in comparison. But as an NFTβ¦
Enter: #desertminis
So to summarize:
I was annoyed and less than inspired by the trends in the NFT space (maximalist, cartooned PFPs, etc.)
I was realizing the reality of the constraints of the online format β the same sized square, regardless of the size of the IRL artwork
I was falling in love with tiny watercolors
I had just moved to Joshua Tree
And suddenly *magic fingers* it all makes sense.
I realized that when photographed and blown up a viewer could experience these watercolor minis in all the majesty that I experienced them as the artist, nose to paper. The ink spreads and layering and slight brushstrokes became gripping, as if they were 5 foot by 5 foot instead of 1.5β square.
Crucially, I also was missing writing. I had been working on an autobiographical writing project for going on a year and was months into writerβs block. While there are some successful poets now, there was really no one I could find at the time doing writing projects in the NFT space and I liked the idea of being able to combine the mediums.
Similar to the realization of the size of screen, I was thinking about how each NFT is able to be minted with a description which sits, permanently, right next to the image on platform page. I often write pieces to accompany my paintings, but those pieces reside at best in Instagram captions. I find myself wanting a viewer to hear my voice as they look at a piece, words accompanying image, almost like a movie but static. This was another part of the βmediumβ of NFTs that was intriguing to me β and underutilized. This was about 6 months before CryptoCoven blew minds open with their beautiful articulations; in my opinion the writing for that PFP project is as strong if not stronger than the art itself, but it is really how the two work hand in hand that make it so magical. I realized, with NFTs, I could force (lol) my writing upon the viewer. I could sneak in a poetry project, hidden behind art. And I could sneak tiny art, hidden in your standard square. #desertminis was born.
#desertminis
The NFT collection was both simple and complex β a daily watercolor + poetry couplet pair, chronicling my first year as a full-time resident in Joshua Tree. Each mini would be assigned to a date of that year, with the painting and couplet inspired by what happened in that day. I said <400 minis would be minted in total, 365 days plus the flexibility to add extra.
The extra were eventually revealed to be βmini series,β groups of minis that were around a theme but not necessarily tied to a specific day. The only mini series at the time of publishing is one called βDesert Willowβ (minis 041 - 046) which are about my relationship to my favorite tree on my street and the barn owl that lived in it.
I priced the minis at 0.05eth (now 0.07eth), which by that time was about $100-$150. A lot in USD but basically the standard entry price for an NFT project. I liked the idea of creating a βgatewayβ project β with my 1/1s regularly fetching over 0.3-0.5eth (>$1000 at the time), I knew a lot of newer or less wealthy collectors were already priced out of my work. With #desertminis, I hoped to create a new entry point and experiment with a more collectible-looking project that was visually distinct enough from my 1/1 work so as not to cannibalize it or bring my prices down.
In the theme of a collectible or PFP-like project, I introduced the concept of rarity (one that has, admittedly, been poorly executed). Minis had βof notes,β which were categories that some, not all, fell into. The rarity of each βof noteβ wonβt be known until the project is complete, but Iβve teased a few as time has gone on (most of which are on this Twitter thread). For example, there will only be 12 astrological sign βof notes,β one for every sign. Or there are a finite number of town names, plant names, etc. so you can assume those will be relatively rare. Again, will that really make a difference to collectors? Maybe, maybe not, but it did give a new aspect to the collection that wasnβt present in my 1/1 work.
Minting my book, couplet by couplet
The project is seen by most as an art project, but for me, it has always been a writing project. When #desertminis launched, I teased that at the end of the project every primary and secondary holder (i.e. the first person to buy it and the second person, in case some or all of them are resold) would get a physical token. Eventually I revealed that that token was a book β my first poetry book, which I already knew I wanted to self-publish. In other words, the funds for the project were going directly to making that book a reality, but more on that later.
A sidebar for you blockchain purists out there: I do not have a coding background and this project was launched in May 2021. At the time, Manifold was not yet live and with no budget, it was not realistic for me to put the project on my own smart contract β hence, it went on Opensea. I realize that technically the writing is not on the blockchain (or at least not in the way many blockchain maxis would like) and that it is not ideal for it to live in the description of the NFT. If it was launching today I would do it differently. But then again if I was launching today, it wouldnβt be (one of) the first of its kind.
Here is where it gets really interesting and sneaky, at least in my opinion. I have, quite literally, been minting my book over the past year via this project. Every #desertminis couplet or title is part of the text of my book. In fact, I have whole poems that I have chopped up into pieces and placed across minis, which will only make sense when the couplets are laid out together, say, on a printed page. Or in a printed book.
For illustrative purposes, I will reveal one here, βA Flower in the Desertβ which sits across #desertminis 066 - 071.
A Flower In The Desert
baby you told me love was not a flower
not something to be held, delicately, lest it wilt
my love i said - i know,
i am the flower
blooming, despite everything
pushing out in the dead of night, despite the summer
i heard my name called by the rain and by the darkness
i sat not daring to emerge for
how was i to know that
darkness is where we are given our light
i sat, not daring
until i had no choice
i did not know
yet here i am,
blooming despite it all
here i am, shining with the audacity of a flower
in the desert
The poem, printed again, now with the #desertminis image and number tied to each βcoupletβ added in.
A Flower In The Desert
baby you told me love was not a flower
not something to be held, delicately, lest it wilt
my love i said - i know,
i am the flower
blooming, despite everything
pushing out in the dead of night, despite the summer
i heard my name called by the rain and by the darkness
i sat not daring to emerge for
how was i to know that
darkness is where we are given our light
i sat, not daring
until i had no choice
i did not know
yet here i am,
blooming despite it all
here i am, shining with the audacity of a flower
in the desert
If you have been following my writing, you will notice there are multiple references to my Pushcart Prize nominated piece, βPurple is A Late Blooming Colorβ in this poem. That piece will also be included in the book.
Or, some minis are the titles of full pieces. Iβve been reading some of these pieces at local poetry readings and open mics to work them out. One such is Berry Cobbler (RHS), which is the title of a longer prose piece linked here.
Is your mind blown? Are you excited? Are you having fun yet? Because I was and still am having A LOT OF FUN! Not gonna lie I felt like I was a freaking GENIUS when I concepted this and was sure people were going to eat it up. In realityβ¦
The Reality: Struggling Through Summer 2021
I launched #desertminis on May 18, 2021 with the first 7 minis, corresponding to May 11 - May 18. I learned very quickly that the minting process was tedious and best done in batches. I was super excited about the project and very excited about my new home.
The first mini I sold was 002 Joshua Tree. Julian Weisser, who I didnβt know at the time, found the project and tweeted this.
I was delighted. He totally got it and saw exactly what I hoped people would see in the work. I felt so seen, I felt like my vision was working. And then, crickets.
I had this hope that my minis would sell out right away and that everyone would be waiting daily for the drop, which I would drop at different times with cryptic tweets like: βsunset in the desert is at 7:12pβ = the time the next mini would drop. I love shit like that. If you havenβt been able to tell β I am always deeply committed to the bit. I love storytelling, I love interwoven threads. I love easter eggs that are planted months before the viewer could know. I love a reveal. The more tangled the web we weave, the better. So yes of course, there are even more #desertminis surprises in store that wonβt be revealed in this article. I suppose I was world building in a poetic way before the conversation in the space turned to world building in an overt way.
But anyway, I launched β and I was pretty much the only one who was excited. Plus I only had a few hundred followers on Twitter so not much of a captive audience (Iβm close to 3K now) to market to. I sold that first one and then nothing. The market also started to dip going into Summer 2021.
On the personal front, buying a fixer upper wasβ¦ ambitious, to say the least. And I moved to the desert in May, right in time for summer. I found scorpions in, yes INSIDE, my house. The former tenant left a moldy mattress in the rafters of the garage. My AC was broken and I was getting asthma attacks from sleeping in a room with old carpet. On top of that, I was not ready for the implications of small town life. Letβs just say individuals went out of their way to make sure I knew I was not welcome. The harassment left me fearful and kept me mostly at home, which didnβt not contribute to my feelings of lonelinessβ¦ since !!newsflash!! it is hard to make friends when you are hiding at your (hot, broken) house. It was extremely personally challenging and I often questioned if I had made a terrible mistake (see: caption from 5/23/21).
When I say this project is a daily diary of sorts, I mean that literally. If you follow me on Instagram you will daily moments in my stories β sunsets or say, sourdough croissants, often end up as minis.
I now understand that entire period as an initiation β my initiation into, and by, the desert. The desert asks nothing of us if we come, and everything of us if we stay. And in the months since I came I have willingly given her everything and she has shown me her gifts in return. But that is another chapter, for another day (i.e. for the aforementioned book).
In summary, the reception was tepid enough and my personal life challenging enough that I shelved #desertminis (and really, NFTs completely) for most of summer 2021. From late May to August, basically none were minted.
Belated Reception: NFTwitter Embraces the Minis
Then in August, my URL (and now IRL) friend Michael found the project and tweeted about it. His tweet led to a couple more sales. One of the benefits of the blockchain is once the art is minted it is always there, waiting to be discovered by the right person. If that person is influential well, things can change very quickly.
A few days later I experienced a βfloor sweep,β i.e. an anonymous account bought every available NFT I had on Opensea, including 6 #desertminis, a bunch of editions and 1/1s. Insane. This person, one of my best collectors still, hasnβt revealed themselves to me. Even more insane.
All of us sudden, I had no inventory. It appeared it was time to dive back in.
While not active in the space, I had still been writing and painting. And, I had been doing one-off calls with traditional artists who were interested in NFTs so I decided to finally put my learnings together and offer a free workshop. From Fall 2021 to Winter 2022 I onboarded over 200 traditional artists into the space. That effort, along with the surprise sales, brought me very much back to NFTwitter and my following began to grow.
Many of these people were women who were new to the space and it is a huge point of pride to have a meaningful number of collectors who are women and who had a mini as their first ever NFT. If youβve been waiting to dive in, Iβd love for this to be you as well obviously. :)
Fall 2021 I started to mint minis regularly again. In the month after the sweep I sold 16. From October to November 2021 I sold 25. And so it went, which brings us to today where about 130 minis are held across 105 collectors.
The Poems & U
One of the things that has been most meaningful to me is that collectors have been reading the poems and often picking their mini based on the text. One who found me on Twitter told me him and his wife read all of the captions over a glass of wine on a Friday night and then picked their minis based on the words ones they liked best. I loved that so much. Link me to another NFT project with stories like that. There arenβt many, I assure you.
This was my hope for the #desertminis project. I wanted to bring a moment of calm to the space. I wanted people to pause. I wanted us to appreciate simplicity and the mundane. I wanted to force poetry on tech bros (joking, but not really).
Itβs worth saying not all of the writings are deep β some are funny, like 143 doggie xanax which is the day I took Minion to the vet and she got prescribed meds for her separation anxiety. Like I said, daily diary. Not every day is sunsets and rainbows. If youβre a collector and want to know what your mini refers to, just ask.
βWen Utility?β The One-Off Perks of #desertminis
One of the most maddening things for artists in the NFT space is being asked what the βutilityβ of their project is, i.e. the perks outside of the art itself (βART IS THE UTILITY!!β). For many PFP projects this means parties, happy hours, exclusive events that you get access to by holding their NFT. In this way, NFTs become a ticket β access to something in the IRL world.
Contrary to most artists, I love this. As I said, I believe art should be communal. And if you know me personally, you know I love a party. I love gathering over a meal and I love hanging out IRL. So my dream was always to bring this to the #desertminis community, if there was interest and if it was financially feasible.
This project is pretty conceptually complex and as such it has actually attracted a lot of interesting builders in the Web3 space. That has been another vote of confidence for me; people who are building things I admire and who see the creative world I would also like to see are buying my work. As I started seeing this happen, I thought β I need to get these people around a table. We need to break bread. Events were on.
I did the first of these gatherings in Malibu in the spring where about 20 collectors and friends got together over a beautiful brunch. I hoped to do another one for NFT NYC and one in SF, but the universe (market) had other plans. I still want to do something in Joshua Tree in conjunction with Highway 62 Art Tours, which I will be showing at the weekends of October 14 and 21, 2022. Save the date, come to the desert!
Iβve also had the opportunity to partner with one of my favorite Web3 start-ups, Gallery, to give access to their platform to my collectors. While events have a cost, giving access to new collections or platforms often does not so that feels like a compelling perk to be pointed atβ¦ just a thought. ;)
That being said, I canβt make any promises and I donβt want anyone to buy the project in the hopes that a cool event might happen. The reality is the project is priced very affordably and that price doesnβt support the cost of events (unless it starts trading on secondaryβ¦ *speaks it into the universe*). The very tangible utility is that collectors will be mailed the book once it is completed and hopefully, get some pleasure for being part of my creative journey. That is the roadmap. I am minting paintings with poetry, then I am writing a book, then I am sending it to you and you hopefully you will read it.
I will say that this is the project closest to my heart and it is not lost on me that many of these 100 people not only took a chance on someone they didnβt know personally, they also took time to engage with a reflection of my heart and soul and spend their hard earned money on that. I am forever grateful. And there is nothing that would make me happier than if they all eventually made that money back, in multiples. Know that that is an an intention of mine. But no promises. I am just an artist living in the desert trying to create beauty and get by while having fun on the internet. I donβt have a tech team (yet). Give a girl a break! :)
The Future: βLove Letters to Melancholy (and Other Things I Found in the Desert)β
Which brings us to today, well over a year into the #desertminis project. Iβd like to make some announcements.
I always said #desertminis would be less than 400 pieces. Iβve decided that the final count of #desertminis minted will be 250 total pieces or about 90 new ones. This is less than the implied ~400, but still within the promise of <400. The 250 will comprise of mini series pieces and pieces attributed to individual days between May 11, 2021 and May 11, 2022, my first year in the desert. This means some days will not have minis and that is ok.
My goal is always to be transparent (except for good surprises & easter eggs). My motivation for decreasing the total number is threefold β (1) conceptually I feel I have taken the minting portion of the project as far as I can and I would like to move to the writing portion, (2) artistically (i.e. painting/NFTs) I have other projects Iβd like to focus on which I also think will be as, if not more, interesting to current collectors and (3) my hope is that by decreasing the total number the existing become rarer and more valuable, i.e., that this decision will create value for those already in the project.
On the note of rarity β the βof notesβ are the after-thought of the project, but I will still see them through. Anything that has been promised (i.e. 12 astrological signs) will be completed in the 250. At the end of the project, I will release the final rarity breakdown of all the βof notes.β 10% of minis will still have unlockable surprises. Keep an eye on our Twitter account for more on this.
20 pieces of the ~90 remaining pieces will be kept to be gifted to individuals who have been supportive of my work and/or who I believe will be good additions to the #desertminis community. There is no deadline to when these must be gifted but I will also account for all of these on Twitter. As of writing, there are 17 available minis and 70 additional which will be put up for sale in the next couple months. If you want one, jump on it!
When all the minis have been minted, I will move to the writing chapter of the project. I am not sure when the book will be finished but primary and secondary holders will receive a copy upon completion. The working title of the book is: βLove Letters to Melancholy (and Other Things I Found in the Desert).β As a fun fact, the original working title was βSeeking Stillnessβ β which is the name of mini 001. As part of the writing chapter, select poems and essays from the book will be minted prior to publishing. Keep an eye out for this and keep an eye on your wallets. Again, I love surprises and I have a plan.
If you are a collector and havenβt said hi yet, please do so! Events notifications are sent over email, so DM your contact info to @desertDAO so I can include you. If you have any problems with these changes, please reach out to me and we will find a way to remedy them. I appreciate you and thank you for being on this journey with me.
#desertminis is the art project closest to my heart and one that many of you believed in prior to me gaining traction in the space. This space has a bias towards holders, but I have a bias towards primary holders β especially for this project. Even if you resell, I will remember you β and your wallet address. ;) You are the ones who read the poetry, looked through the art, and took a chance on me. I will not forget that and I intend to honor that to the best of my ability.
And with that, new #minis are live. If youβd like to collect one, you can do so here.
If you are new to the space and want to buy your first NFT, I would be honored! You can learn how to set-up your cryptowallet here. If you have problems, just reach out and we can hop on a phone call or zoom and I can help you get set-up!
Thank you for being here for the oral (written) history of #desertminis. The story continues⦠onto the next chapter soon. Many blessings.
Extra curious? Explore my other NFTs outside #desertminis:
BLOOM collection on Opensea (my original 1/1 and edition collections)
1/1s on Foundation - this includes my only currently listed digital + physical pair, though any available physical painting on my website can also be minted as an NFT for an addβl cost
1/1s on KnownOrigin - these are my favorite 1/1s. They combine physical and digital painting to create works that are unique to the NFT space β the βunderlayerβ of the painting is painted with oil paint on canvas, then transferred to the iPad where it is painted over digitally, and then minted.
1/1s on Solana - not so active, but maybe I will be soon!
and of course REAL LIVE PAINTINGS!