NFT Showroom Artist Spotlight: @almightymelon

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself!

I have two names under which I produce art, one that came from gaming and the other from stickering. Although I have not done so in several years, I used to produce sticker art under the name LOOK! (stylised with dots in the 'O's). I put my stickers in cities on three continents. My earliest NFT artworks were adaptations of stickers.

I am also a gamer. All the content I made for gaming was under the name AlmightyMelon. When I made my Hive wallet, it was to play Splinterlands and I used this name. AlmightyMelon has become my handle since then for Discord also. To be honest, it seems like now that my art is primarily digitally distributed, the street artist LOOK! is being replaced by the NFT artist @almightymelon.

Here is a portrait of me, almightymelon. It is a remastered image from an original that I purchased over a decade ago by commission from someone whose concepts I enjoyed. Their name was Tarko Black, from memory, but I can't find them on the internet now to link them.

Q: What is your art background?

As well as sticker art, I have also made visual art in a physical form almost my whole life. My primary art form, really though, is writing and teaching poetry. Poetry informs all other media I work in.

For this reason, my style leans towards the conceptual. To me, conveying a concept, or framing it, or putting it on a pedestal: these things constitute art.

Q: How long have you been in cryptoart/ NFTs, how did you discover them and what has been your experience so far?

Two years. I read about using NFTs for art, and I wanted to try it. I was a Hive user from its beginning. I searched and found that one could mint art NFTs on Hive on NFT Showroom, and I applied.

My experience has been that there are more creators than collectors. Those who create need to collect more. We also need to hope that blockchain becomes more mainstream, so that conventional art collectors start making more purchases.

Q: Any new art or upcoming projects you would like to tease?

I am working on a series of New Zealand landscapes generated by AI from both noise and from photography. The photographs are of my surroundings here in New Zealand and also photographs of painted art works of this country.

With the help of my wife, who is quality control, I am gradually selecting, batching and processing them together. The final result will be a series of NFTs released at once, with a single copy of each that gives commercial rights.

I can't give you any progress images, however, because I'm not yet satisfied with the quality. The problem of showing AI in progress is an interesting one.