Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic is an award-winning, multidisciplinary artist whose work has been recognized and displayed in prestigious institutions and venues such as The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Art Basel Miami Beach and even the White House. His inspiration stems from a diverse cross-section of cultures — embracing a wide variety of mediums from fashion and film to live art performances and beyond.

His unique artistry exists at the junction where art and technology meet, and he considers the history and evolution of the two as inseparable. He sees technology as a transformative force — one that has expanded and will continue to broaden the art world — opening new opportunities and encouraging artists to reimagine and refine their work. Samsung Newsroom sat down with Aerosyn-Lex to discuss his journey as an artist and how technology has become interwoven into his work.

▲ Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic

Early Encounters With Multicultural Inspirations

Q: Can you provide a brief overview of your artistic journey?

I’ve been a life-long artist and creative. Art and design are core elements of my self-identity. I studied art from an early age and never stopped using creativity as my primary means of communication. I’m thankful that my artwork and designs have been recognized by some of the biggest institutions and brands in the world, and I’m excited for what’s to come!

Q: Your early influences present a fascinating blend of various cultures, including Japanese calligraphy, Latin script, graffiti and Slavic mysticism. How did you encounter and choose to incorporate these distinctive elements into your artwork?

Early on in life, I was exposed to calligraphy through a course I took during a summer vacation. For some reason, the act of writing and all its cultural variations stuck with me. Be it Japanese calligraphy or Western scripts, writing really became a huge influence on all my works. I think there is great power in the written word, and those words can take on any shape.

Q: How do you incorporate diverse cultural perspectives into your art? How does that resonate with audiences across the world?

Growing up as an immigrant in the United States in a culturally diverse area helped shape my identity. I’ve been fortunate to travel the world through my work, and I strive to translate those experiences through my artwork. My goal is to connect with people on a subconscious level, regardless of their background.

Q: What inspires you to keep pushing your artistic boundaries?

I’m thoroughly inspired by evolving technologies and their ability to reach larger scales and audiences globally. Having worked across various global markets and diverse industries, my goal is to share my work with the world, aiming to leave a lasting legacy.

Exploring the Entire Range of Artistic Mediums and Projects

 Q: Can you recount a project that pushed you beyond your comfort zone?

I was commissioned to direct my first short film “SCRIPTURA VITAE” many years ago for the BBC and Channel 4 in the U.K. This began as a simple concept, but it turned into one of the most life-changing projects I’ve ever worked on. I had to teach myself filmmaking whilst making the actual film! This single work really set the stage for many of my major projects that followed.

Q: Your extensive portfolio spans across pop culture, fashion, technology and more. What inspires your choice of medium for different projects?

My process varies greatly depending on the project. From designing fashion collections to crafting live art performances for Carnegie Hall, the medium follows the concept. There’s no single approach that works for all those varied applications of creativity.

I look at each project individually and try to figure out the best way to craft a memorable and emotionally moving work or performance. I always begin by thinking of a concept for a piece before attempting to work out the best way to represent that. 

Q: You’ve collaborated with cultural icons and brands such as Jeff Koons, Nike and Mr. Children, and your art has been exhibited at renowned venues around the world. How have these experiences shaped you?

Those are definitely some of my “greatest hits” and they certainly have instilled confidence and motivation to push the limits of my work. However, the art industry can be a fickle and fast-changing landscape to navigate. Nothing is guaranteed in the career of an artist — to sustain artistic relevance, one must constantly push forward to redefine oneself.



▲ An interview with Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic

Connecting Artists and Audiences Through The Frame and Samsung Art Store

 Q: How has your experience been partnering with Samsung Art Store?

It has been truly amazing. I was thrilled to have so many acquaintances and new supporters reach out and mention that they’d seen my work on the Art Store. It’s such a wonderful platform, and I’m excited to continue crafting and creating work for it! 

I truly appreciate brands that understand the value of art and genuinely seek to support artists and their artwork. The art market has seen a seismic shift in the past few years, and I believe it takes large players to come up with innovative ideas for new platforms and ways of interacting with broad audiences. I think Samsung is doing just that in a unique way.

Q: Can you tell us about the technique behind your signature ethereal ink paintings? How do they appear on The Frame?

My work is created in a fully practical, non-digital technique that I developed over years of experimentation. These works began with my film “SCRIPTURA VITAE” and were then exhibited at The MoMA. I love how my work is presented on The Frame — having them live inside people’s homes now is a great feeling. The Frame’s aesthetic and calibration just make everything pop! 

Q: Can you recommend three of your favorite pieces available on the Art Store?

The beauty of the Art Store is that you can change the artwork based on your mood. Some of my favorites are below, but check them all out! There will be more coming soon, so please keep an eye out!

▲ CHROMIS IOMELAS MMXXI (2021)

CHROMIS IOMELAS MMXXI (2021) is from my “Living Paintings” series, which embodies the fluidity and movement in my process.

▲ VERSALIS DRIP MMXXII (2022)

VERSALIS DRIP MMXXII (2022) is a playful use of paint as a painting.  This work is taken from a newer series of work which was initially created as 60FT (20 meter) Murals for the Wynwood Arts District in Miami, Florida. The concept was to create a dynamic representation of fluid paint but play with the scale of the artwork which would be represented in the context of Trompe L’oeil.

▲ VERSAEL BRUSH MMXXI (2021)

VERSAEL BRUSH MMXXI (2021) introduces meticulous calligraphy which looks incredible in the crisp 4k of The Frame.  This piece speaks to my long standing passion from calligraphy and the written word. These large paintings are steeped in multicultural symbology and seek to find beauty in the pattern and rhythm of the calligraphic strokes and lettering used within the artwork.

Pushing the Boundaries of Art With Technology

 Q: Your work often blends art with various forms of technology. How do you see this intersection shaping the future of art?

The history of art cannot be separated from the progression of technology. Their stories are intertwined infinitely. As a huge tech nerd, technology is a space that I find endlessly fascinating and inspiring.

We’re certainly moving into a radically new age with the proliferation of artificial intelligence, and I’m excited to participate in pushing creative methods forward with technology. I am truly looking forward to working on projects in this space, and I’m thrilled to combine them with the practices I’ve developed over my career. 

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek at some of the projects you are working on?

I’m excited to be working on major projects across various metropolitan cities including Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Riyadh, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. These projects range from large-scale installations for major hotels to huge digital art installations in completely new city centers.

I’m working on some new projects in the gaming space as well, which I’m thrilled about since I’m an avid gamer. I am also launching my own collection of luxury Japanese whisky, sake, shochu and wine this year with the award-winning Japanese distillery, Nishi Shuzo. Lastly, I’m looking to establish a large art studio in Los Angeles.

I have a lot going on at the moment, but I wouldn’t have it any other way! 

Visit Samsung Art Store in The Frame to see more of Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic’s collection.

Often seen clambering for scraps on city streets, pigeons tend to be an overlooked and even despised species. The birds’ ubiquity in urban areas, and their colloquial characterization as “flying rats,” have given them a lackluster reputation that Brendan Burden upends in his ongoing series of portraits.

The Ottawa-based photographer originally encountered the crest of the Jacobin pigeon, a lavish crown of plumage that wraps around its neck like a voluminous garment. “I had no idea pigeons could look this way and started doing some research and came to find out that there is a wide variety of pigeons, wild and domestic, many of which are quite beautiful,” he says. “I wondered whether I could apply more formal portrait techniques to these birds.”

After Ottawa Magazine commissioned him to shoot some creatures for a story on the Canadian Pigeon Fancier’s Association, the Fancy Pigesons series began to take shape. “My intention was to juxtapose the lowly pigeon with formal portraiture techniques and provide a new perspective on something ubiquitous, bordering on completely invisible,” Burden shares. Set against solid, paper backdrops resting in a large, show cage, the images evoke studio shots and capture each creature’s unique features. The Kormorner tumbler, for example, appears as if it’s wearing a turtleneck of brown feathers with a puffy collar, while the Moden’s gleaming, iridescent neck contrasts the soft, black and orange plumes of its body.

Left: English long-faced tumbler. Right: Lavender racing homer pigeon

As Burden photographed the birds—all are in the care of fanciers and avian enthusiasts rather than breeders—he learned about the unique relationship they have with humans. Pigeons are likely the first species to be domesticated, a history reflected in Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphics that suggest the practice was likely happening more than 5,000 years ago. He explains:

Had you asked me prior to undertaking this project, where they came from, I would have just assumed that they were wild and had some kind of symbiotic relationship with humans, like rats or mice or any number of other creatures. But in fact, they’re feral domesticated birds, and the reason they’re everywhere is in part because humans have been breeding them, often for nothing other than their beauty, for thousands of years.

As Burden adds to the Fancy Pigeons series, he’s shifting to photographing wild species, a change that requires more travel, time, and patience. “Being that they’re birds, sometimes you just don’t get what you hoped for and have to reshoot,” he says. You can follow his progress on Instagram, and shop limited-edition prints on his site. (via PetaPixel)

Kormorner tumbler

Bald head roller

Top left: Crested pigeon. Top right: Copper black wing archangel. Bottom left: Egyptian swift. Bottom right: Crested pigeon

Domestic flight

Ring necked dove

Left: Show homer pigeon. Right: Racing pigeon

Indian fantail

Moden

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article In ‘Fancy Pigeons,’ Brendan Burden Captures the Flair of Underappreciated Birds appeared first on Colossal.

ATLANTA, Aug. 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Clark Atlanta University Art Museum is among several HBCU museums and galleries to have artwork featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism.” The exhibition is scheduled to run from February 25 through July 28, 2024.

“Through some 160 works, it will explore the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’sHarlem and Chicago’sSouth Side and Nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration when millions of African Americans began to move away from the segregated rural South. The first survey of the subject in New York City since 1987, the exhibition will establish the Harlem Renaissance as the first African American–led movement of international modern art and will situate Black artists and their radically new portrayals of the modern Black subject as central to our understanding of international modern art and modern life.” The MET News Release

CAU Art Museum’s Woman in Blue, a painting by William H. Johnson, is the signature image for all media and banners for the exhibition. The portrait is of a Black woman in a vibrant blue dress, staring straight ahead but facing forward, seated sideways on a wooden chair.

“The colors are striking,” said Danille K. Taylor, director of the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, in an article appearing in the New York Times announcing the exhibition. “It’s the angle that she looks at you. The colors and texture give it a three-dimensional quality.”

The CAU Art Museum loaned the MET four additional paintings: Woman with Kerchief by William Artis, Mr. and Mrs. Barton by John N. Robinson Jr., Friends by Margaret Taylor Goss, and Pickets by Roy DeCarava. Denise Murrell, the Merryl H. & James S. Tisch Curator at Large at the MET, researched and traveled to several HBCUs over a two-year period identifying pieces for the exhibition. The MET provided funding for conservation of Woman in Blue. Fisk University Galleries, Hampton University Art Museum, and Howard University Gallery of Art Howard, Fisk also loaned pieces to the exhibition.

About Clark Atlanta University 
Clark Atlanta University was formed with the consolidation of Atlanta University and Clark College, both of which hold unique places in the annals of African American history. Atlanta University, established in 1865 by the American Missionary Association, was the nation’s first institution to award graduate degrees to African Americans. Clark College, established four years later in 1869, was the nation’s first four-year liberal arts college to serve a primarily African American student population. Today, with nearly 4,000 students, CAU is the largest of the four institutions (CAU, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morehouse School of Medicine) that comprise the Atlanta University Center Consortium. It is also the largest of the 37-member UNCF institutions. Notable alumni include James Weldon Johnson, American civil rights activist, poet, and songwriter (Lift Every Voice and Sing, “The Black National Anthem”; Ralph David Abernathy, Sr., American civil rights activist; Congressman Hank Johnson, Georgia District 4; Kenya Barris, American award-winning television and movie producer; Kenny Leon, Tony Award-winning Broadway Director; Jacque Reid, Emmy Award-winning Television Personality and Journalist; Brandon Thompson, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion for NASCAR; Valeisha Butterfield Jones, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the Recording Academy. To learn more about Clark Atlanta University, visit www.cau.edu.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clark-atlanta-university-art-museums-woman-in-blue-is-signature-marketing-image-for-mets-harlem-renaissance-exhibition-301912998.html

SOURCE Clark Atlanta University

ATLANTA, Aug. 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Clark Atlanta University Art Museum is among several HBCU museums and galleries to have artwork featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism.” The exhibition is scheduled to run from February 25 through July 28, 2024.

“Through some 160 works, it will explore the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem and Chicago’s South Side and Nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration when millions of African Americans began to move away from the segregated rural South. The first survey of the subject in New York City since 1987, the exhibition will establish the Harlem Renaissance as the first African American–led movement of international modern art and will situate Black artists and their radically new portrayals of the modern Black subject as central to our understanding of international modern art and modern life.” The MET News Release

CAU Art Museum’s Woman in Blue, a painting by William H. Johnson, is the signature image for all media and banners for the exhibition. The portrait is of a Black woman in a vibrant blue dress, staring straight ahead but facing forward, seated sideways on a wooden chair.

“The colors are striking,” said Danille K. Taylor, director of the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, in an article appearing in the New York Times announcing the exhibition. “It’s the angle that she looks at you. The colors and texture give it a three-dimensional quality.”

The CAU Art Museum loaned the MET four additional paintings: Woman with Kerchief by William Artis, Mr. and Mrs. Barton by John N. Robinson Jr., Friends by Margaret Taylor Goss, and Pickets by Roy DeCarava. Denise Murrell, the Merryl H. & James S. Tisch Curator at Large at the MET, researched and traveled to several HBCUs over a two-year period identifying pieces for the exhibition. The MET provided funding for conservation of Woman in Blue. Fisk University Galleries, Hampton University Art Museum, and Howard University Gallery of Art Howard, Fisk also loaned pieces to the exhibition.

About Clark Atlanta University 
Clark Atlanta University was formed with the consolidation of Atlanta University and Clark College, both of which hold unique places in the annals of African American history. Atlanta University, established in 1865 by the American Missionary Association, was the nation’s first institution to award graduate degrees to African Americans. Clark College, established four years later in 1869, was the nation’s first four-year liberal arts college to serve a primarily African American student population. Today, with nearly 4,000 students, CAU is the largest of the four institutions (CAU, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morehouse School of Medicine) that comprise the Atlanta University Center Consortium. It is also the largest of the 37-member UNCF institutions. Notable alumni include James Weldon Johnson, American civil rights activist, poet, and songwriter (Lift Every Voice and Sing, “The Black National Anthem”; Ralph David Abernathy, Sr., American civil rights activist; Congressman Hank Johnson, Georgia District 4; Kenya Barris, American award-winning television and movie producer; Kenny Leon, Tony Award-winning Broadway Director; Jacque Reid, Emmy Award-winning Television Personality and Journalist; Brandon Thompson, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion for NASCAR; Valeisha Butterfield Jones, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the Recording Academy. To learn more about Clark Atlanta University, visit www.cau.edu.

SOURCE Clark Atlanta University

The art market is moving closer and closer to Indigenous villages. In recent years, several exhibitions have been held abroad that focused on Indigenous peoples from Brazil and Latin America, giving unprecedented visibility to their artists, historically erased by gallery owners and museums.

At this time of high demand for Indigenous art, Europe is also debating how colonialism usurped Amerindian culture and wrongly appropriated its artifacts. An example is the 16^th-century Tupinambá mantle at the National Museum of Denmark, which will be returned to Brazil after three centuries in the institution’s collection. A late reckoning.

Such renewal in the circuit shows how art and politics are inseparable, and it may guide exhibitions and change curators’ colonial thinking. This is the case of Siamo Foresta, an exhibition that opened at Milan’s La Triennale  in June, gathering works by 27 artists related to the Amazon Rainforest. They include Indigenous collectives such as the Yanomami Group, one of the best known in the country, with artists such as André Taniki, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Vital Warasi and Joseca Mokahesi.

This is the collective’s second international exhibition in 2023, after The Yanomami Struggle, at The Shed culture center in New York in February. Alongside the work of photographer Claudia Andujar, who has documented changes in the Yanomami Territory for 50 years, the artists showed, in the largest U.S. city, the struggle of a people who have recently faced one of their worst humanitarian tragedies.

French anthropologist Bruce Albert, the exhibition’s curator, pointed out in a statement to the press that “Siamo Foresta stages an unprecedented encounter between thinkers and defenders of the forest; between Indigenous … and non-Indigenous artists.” The exhibition “draws its founding inspiration from this aesthetic and political vision of the forest as an egalitarian multiverse of living beings, human and non-human and, as such, offers the vibrant allegory of a possible world beyond our anthropocentrism.”

A new art history

This important role played by today’s Indigenous artists has drawn the attention of the international community, which is beginning to see the history of Indigenous peoples’ art in a different light, says curator Edson Kayapó, a member of the Mebengokré Indigenous community. He is co-responsible for programming at the Indigenous Histories department of the São Paulo Museum of Art Assis Chateaubriand (MASP). “We Indigenous peoples have always been here, producing art. And now that society has the opportunity to see this in great depth, it is important to debate issues that have been dragging on for some time,” he says.

Edson Kayapó mentions a point addressed by Albert when he explains that, from the Eurocentric point of view, “man had to dominate nature because it is hostile.” He points out that the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the factors that expanded discussions on our codependency with nature. “After that world crisis, people had to open their eyes. There are U.N. studies mentioning the possibility of new and worse pandemics if we keep devastating the system of biomes. We now face a major climate problem: The Earth is getting hotter and therefore the human project is in a crisis,” the researcher adds.

Edson Kayapó points out that the role of today’s Indigenous art goes beyond exposing socioenvironmental problems; it is a means of preserving traditions and everyday ritualistic acts, something that can be seen in the visions of the Mahku collective, created by the Huni Kuin people, who are also participating in the Siamo Foresta exhibition.

“Mahku is a very sound resistance act, which arises from an artistic and educational project within Indigenous communities. They say, ‘We sell land to demarcate our territories,’ ‘We make art to fight drugs and any other vice within the community,’” says Edson Kayapó.

One of Mahku’s best-known members, Cleiber Bane takes part in Siamo Foresta alongside names like Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe from the Venezuelan side of the Yanomami community, who had a solo exhibition at MASP in July and August. There are also works by Jaider Esbell, from the Makuxi people, one of the biggest names in today’s Brazilian Indigenous art.

Over the last decade, Esbell was responsible for a network that supported Indigenous artists as they established themselves on the circuit and brought many of them along in the wake of his meteoric career. In addition to taking ancient knowledge such as songs and myths of his people beyond Indigenous lands, the artist, who was born in the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Territory in Roraima, used his work to denounce crises in the territory, in addition to being a critic of the art scene itself.

One of the most notable artists of the 34^th São Paulo International Art Biennial, Jaider Esbell took his own life at the height of his career, in November 2021, in the same week he exhibited his works at the pavilion. His paintings were covered by black cloths. It was not only a shock to the art field and Indigenous communities but also a warning about the processes of the art market.

The Jaider Esbell Art Gallery was then created in Boa Vista, Roraima, to manage the artist’s estate and keep his legacy alive. A year later, in 2022, Esbell’s work was featured in Le Vivants, a collective exhibition of Amerindian artists in Lille, France, and some works were acquired by museums around the world such as Paris’ Centre Pompidou.

Indigenous benches in Japan

In addition to the political nature of the works, the alignment between aesthetics and cosmology is a strong feature of Indigenous artists’ works, as reported by sculptor Mayawari Mehinako from Kaupüna village in Xingu, who traveled to Japan in 2019 to open the exhibition BEĨ Collection: Indigenous Banks of Brazil. Such pieces have become objects of desire for the Brazilian intellectualized middle class and each cost an average of 5,000 reais (about $1,270 at the time).

With examples from 43 Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the BEĨ Collection became “a way of disseminating the millennia-old Indigenous culture,” says Mayawari about how Indigenous benches transcend their utilitarian nature.  “They are not decorative items; they are [associated with] cosmology, [since there is a specific moment] for the use of each bench. Our life is strongly related to nature. Some animals are exclusive to the chief’s throne; there are figures for singers, shamans and women.”

Encouraged by his father, who was also a bench maker, to sculpt in order to preserve the images of endangered species such as birds, snakes and the giant armadillo, the largest armadillo in the world, Mayawari bridges the gap between collectors and the village. Thanks to his role as a mediator, several infrastructure works have been built in his community in recent years, such as a health center. The artist also says that a school will be built in the village, in addition to projects that seek to encourage handwork such as the creation of benches, ceramics and basketry. It’s just the beginning,” he says.

According to BEĨ director Tomás Alvim, more international exhibitions of the collection are already scheduled for next year in countries such as Portugal and Spain. Art dealer Carmo Johnson, who works with the Mahku collective, explains that the group will be responsible for a large mural on the main façade of this year’s Venice Biennale — a space coveted by artists from all over the world that opens the doors to a new panorama in the history of art.

Indigenous artists from the Amazon use art for environmental advocacy

Banner image: Siamo Foresta exhibition at La Triennale Foundation, in Milan, Italy. Image courtesy of Andrea Rossetti/La Triennale.

This story was first reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and published here on our Brazil siteon Aug. 21, 2019.

2022 has witnessed significant shifts in the nonfungible token market landscape, with different sectors experiencing varied levels of volatility. At the center of this fluctuation is the Art NFT sector, which has managed to carve out a position of strength, Nansen research reported on Twitter.

Since January 2022, art NFTs have been the best-performing ETH NFT sector

They’ve done better than every other type of NFT, including Blue Chips and Metaverse NFTs, remember them?

But they’re down against the dollar…

Let’s take a look at how down each NFT sector is… pic.twitter.com/ZcZUI2EXDw

— Nansen 🧭 (@nansen_ai) August 29, 2023

The Game-50 index, which encapsulates a diverse range from GameFi to Play-to-Earn platforms, experienced a notably challenging year. Investors who commenced their journey in January with an optimistic $1,000 found their investments gutted to a meager $90 by year-end.

Similarly, the buzz and promise surrounding the metaverse sector were put to the test. The Metaverse-20 index, representative of this digital frontier, began the year with investments valued at $1,000, only to contract to a humbling $202 as the curtains closed on 2022.

The broader NFT market wasn’t immune to the year’s turbulence, according to Nansen. The NFT-500, touted as a barometer for the generalized NFT landscape, recoiled significantly. Starting the year on a high note with investments valued at $1,000, the index ceded ground, ending at a diminished $329.

Yet, not all sectors were mired in challenging terrain. The Social-100 index, emblematic of NFTs rooted in community and interpersonal connections, painted a slightly brighter picture. Starting positions in January, pegged at $1,000, saw a decline, but concluded the year at a relatively healthier $362.

Similarly, the revered Blue Chip-10 index, often perceived as the gold standard within the NFT universe, held strong. Despite facing the market’s unpredictable whims, investments here saw a descent from $1,000 in January to $405 by the year’s culmination.

2. Blue Chip-10: The cream of the crop. The very best and most recognizable NFTs takes the second spot

If you had invested $1,000 in Jan ’22, you would now have $405…

They may be the leading NFTs, but even they’re down in the current market… pic.twitter.com/1fMq9GFHc8

— Nansen 🧭 (@nansen_ai) August 29, 2023

However, the star of the year was undeniably the Art-20 index. Bucking the broader market trend, this index, representing the top 20 art collections by market cap, offered a glimmer of optimism. Investors in this segment would find solace, with January’s $1,000 valuation growing to an impressive $596:

“I guess people really do like the art.”

Ether, often regarded as a bellwether for the digital asset landscape, has had its challenges. A $1,000 allocation to Ether in January translated to $432 by the close of 2022, showing the performance of the Art NFT sector as other NFT sectors struggled.

After standing out in the sun at the San Gennaro festival on Saturday, Mrs. Large and I stopped into The Market-Bantam on our way home. It was hot outside, and as we made our way past produce, the automatic doors of their craft beer cooler swung open for us. What we found inside is now our new favorite art gallery in Connecticut.

We’re weak when it comes to beer knowledge, but strong in recognizing great marketing. The craft beer explosion has largely bypassed us, so we really haven’t paid much attention to the dark sense of humor that has emerged among the craft beer marketers. There are so many great names, I almost bought a Fuzzy Baby Ducks just to see why the hell they thought of that one.

Danbury’s Quirk Works Brewing Scavenger Hunt Items…

ATLANTA: Email marketing platform Intuit Mailchimp has announced a pledge to support local arts organizations in the company’s home city of Atlanta. This pledge comes in response to the recent closures and financial hardships affecting the creative community, and recognizes the valuable work of these arts organizations to drive positive change, foster inclusivity, and enhance the quality of life for all Atlanta residents. Part of Mailchimp’s Give Where You Live initiative that currently supports nonprofits in five other U.S. cities, the program will grant $100,000 in unrestricted funding to 10 community arts organizations. The funding will support ArtsATL, Dashboard, Living Walls, Moving in the Spirit, RE:IMAGINE, True Colors Theatre, Atlanta Music Project, MODA, Atlanta Contemporary, and TILA Studios.

“Creativity is central to Mailchimp’s brand and culture.” said Lain Shakespeare, senior director of corporate citizenship at Intuit Mailchimp, in a statement. “Small and medium sized arts organizations are the heartbeat of Atlanta’s creative economy. Many of these arts organizations are our customers, our partners, and the places ‌where our employees volunteer. We’re proud to help power their prosperity and help grow creative excellence in our home town.”

ArtsATL is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to providing comprehensive coverage, criticism, and support of the arts, artists, and advocates in Atlanta. Their coverage of the arts scene includes music, film, TV, books, theatre, dance, and the visual arts.

Dashboard is a creative nonprofit that produces transformative arts experiences in public spaces. Their work includes large-scale immersive installations, nontraditional gallery exhibitions, event design and production, public art commissions, artist grants, and public programming.

Living Walls creates inclusive, intentional, thought-provoking public art to inspire social change. The organization seeks to change the historically white male-dominated industry of public art by creating more space, visibility, representation, and celebration for women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ voices, especially in places that face gentrification and erasure of these communities.

Moving in the Spirit is a creative youth development program that uses dance to teach young people the social, emotional, and cognitive skills they need to thrive. Their work integrates dance instruction with performance, leadership, and mentor opportunities, engaging 250 children and teens annually.

RE:IMAGINE is an education and workforce development organization for the creative media industry that seeks to equip the next generation of representative storytellers.

True Colors Theatre is a nonprofit regional theatre company that aims to celebrate the rich tradition of Black storytelling while giving voice to bold artists from all cultures.

Atlanta Music Project operates in under-resourced communities to provide world-class music training and performance opportunities that support youth growth and development. All AMP programming is offered tuition-free and includes access to a musical instrument, class materials, teaching artists, and performance opportunities, in exchange for the requirement that participants commit to attending all classes.

MODA (Museum of Design Atlanta) is the only museum in the Southeast dedicated exclusively to the study and celebration of all things design. MODA seeks to advance the understanding and appreciation of design as the convergence of creativity and functionality through exhibitions, education, and programming for visitors of all ages.

Atlanta Contemporary is a Southeast contemporary art center that presents over 200 artists and creatives from the local, national, and international art scenes each year through its various exhibition, project spaces, and programs. The center offers more than 125 programs annually including Contemporary Kids, Contemporary Cocktails, Contemporary Talks, and the subsidized Studio Artist Program.

TILA Studios is an arts incubator, co-working and gallery space serving Black women artists and creatives in the metro Atlanta area. The organization seeks to empower artists to create and showcase their work.

While enthusiastic about their contributions, Intuit Mailchimp acknowledges that this funding is “only a fraction of the support that the creative ecosystem of Atlanta needs.”

Intuit Mailchimp is an email and marketing automations platform for growing businesses. With its marketing technology, customer support, and informational content, the company seeks to empower millions of customers around the world to start and grow their businesses. Mailchimp has invested more than $15 million into small and medium sized organizations.