The Story Behind My Newest objkt.com Collection Entitled “A Penny”
https://objkt.com/collection/KT1K1Vr44uSbcP5h68xW7eQQMQQUPJTBuNU1
The wonderful msbourland.tez/.eth aka @msbourland on Twitterz, asked me the following about my new "A Penny" NFT 1/1 collection on OBJKT.com
"So, this series is really weirdly cool - where did the idea come from? I'm a fan!!"
https://twitter.com/msbourland/status/1587017177919389696?s=20&t=qdMzfm4-5x_7CJnDV7q0_g
I decided to ramble as long as I could stand it on tumblr, because I rarely am asked about the background/inspirations/ideas behind of any of my works, so I thought it would be fun, and a shout out to my blogger/blogspot days (OMG, SMH). She is a famous writer you know . . .
I spray painted 200-300 US pennies during the summer of 2021 for one good reason - I ran out of 12” LPs and 45s to paint, and many bad reasons. In late September 2022, I scanned a handful and had a teledildoepiphany while looking at the scanned images. In March 2022, I went live with this teledildofonics NFT project. On Oct. 25th, 2022, I began minting the pennies, with only level/brightness/contrast-esc post scan editing. Pennies were scanned in at 600 DPI, come in either PNG or JPG files, and with two resolution used, 585x585px and 485x485px.
The too long potion of a TLDR Post
Note: Tumblr ate the edit to about 3 edits for some reason, likely an ID10T user error code, while doing this, so if you complain about my typos, I will block you just like i do on twitter. I am a typo machine, get over it.
I am writing this post because a couple of people have asked me about the origins of this “weirdly interesting” (thank you msbourland.tez/.eth for this particular label for my collection, I love it). I usually shit post on twitter all day, and I usually don't write many words on tumblr, I just post photos. I had been sitting on this project for about a year and a half before I did anything with it, and it was because I was thinking about what to do, so I have thoughts to share.
I have always enjoyed stamps and coins. I would not say that I collect them, but I do gather them. Specifically, I would say I gather those smashed penny machine pennies that cost 51 cents and you turn the handle to mush it, and I love wheat back pennies. I have a ton of those too, but no wheat backs were injured in the making of this NFT collection. Pennies are just cool.
I moved with my family from the southern US, 18 hours north to a little state called Maine during the summer of 2020. I will refer to Maine as "Almost Canada" from this point forward. I have always kept myself busy during various life transitional times with art, and that was the same during the summer of 2021, I did the same. I have always been into graffiti, not as a creator, but as a viewing consumer. I do, however, enjoy creating with spray paint and have for about 10 years now.
Once the snow melted and the tundra began to thaw in the spring up in Almost Canada, I tried to soak up as much sun as I could and started spray painting everything I could think of. Of the coolest things I had found to spray paint were vinyl records. I started doing this as a test for another artistic friend who was brainstorming for another project. I had all of the materials so I tried it out and sent him photos of it.
the first record test . . .
I saw something I could do with the records, and I had a shit ton of very nasty, not listenable, garbage records (and many good ones). So I started spray painting all of them I could justify destroying. I sprayed about like 40-50 12inches and too many 45s to count. I had no intent for a longer project at the start, I was just doing it, and seeing where that took my creative spirit, with one exception
I made this drum trigger out of a painted record
The real point of this long winded tumblr rant is to show off what I needed up doing with the records. I soon found that my heat gun would warp the hell out of the wax
I thought “Maybe I should mold them into a sculpture?” So I made a sculpture, one that is about .75 meters tall and wide and a few smaller pieces. This is hanging in my garage currently, my wife won’t let it in the house, and that is a wise move, iMO.
Up to this point, I used a whole hellava lot of words to lead up to the pennies getting painted. I am a walking train wreck, that is how I roll. Eventually I ran out of records that I could justify destroying, so I started spray painting anything I could find trying to brainstorm. I started experimenting with various paper types too. You know what happens outside though, it sure gets windy, and the wind loves to blow my bad pop art around my neighbors yards. Rocks do not work that great as outdoor paperweights for in process works, they sit to high and block the spray depending on your angle.
Do you know what works pretty well for holding down paper in normal breezy day inland with out standing is your line of fire while paining? Pennies, pennies work great. And you know what? It is just a penny, you can just throw it away after things dry and that is perfect because I have about 1/8 of a metric ton of pennies in my closet.
I don't even remember what I was working on and using pennies as paperweights on, because when I came back to check what ever it was, the pennies had dried, and now Lincoln was a Pink AF, or Green, or Sea Foam, and the 10 that had got hosed down looked pretty damn slick.
I had no idea of what to do with these pennies at first, I thought they were cool though. So did my kids. I live in Almost Canada, and I knew my outdoor oxygen friendly spray painting station would end at some point early fall, so I started painting a few pennies every day when I was working on papers or a canvas. At some point, I was just painting pennies till it got cold. I still have not counted how many pennies I painted, but I have minted 85 at the time this tumbler was tumbl'ed.
The idea to mint just the scans of the pennies came from me doing what I usually do on twitter, I just post a bunch of random things I make or have made and shill a little and talk shit a little, so I posted these. I was still looking for something to do with them. Two people, Santiago @neymrqz and the marvelous ty/fu @tyfu67607885, also two of my favorite people in this whole damn wild world of anons, commented that they were really very good art'ing. The first couple of pennies I posted, Santiago DM'd me and said they were really good, and asked me when I was minting them. "just like the scan of them?" and he said "yes, my friend, yes.”
This made me think about a decorated $2 bill I had bought a few years back of Micheal Jordan by Rency. It is an amazing piece. I think I paid $20 or $30 for it late 2019-ish. $20 for a decorated $2 bill, and I laughed at myself for paying the 10x markup. When Santiago told me I should mint them, thought "should freaking mint these? LOL, what if I charge 1 tezos, cause that would be funny AF, charging 1 tezos for a jpeg/png of a penny. That would be really fu . . . oh. shit. yes. yes. mint them , yes . . . "
And here we are now, slightly after midnight on Nov 2, 2022! Once I started minting them, I began to get excited about it because I finally figured out what to do with a concept I sat on for many months. While this may not be the most entertaining story to other reading it, I wanted to write these thoughts down because given the amount of weed a I smoke and codeine dreaming I partake in, I may not remember the spark behind these. I may not remember my seed phrase, but whatever. So, if you made it to this point, thank you for reading my long winded, typo filled, anti climatic rundown on an NFT project that I feel is my most successful to this point.
I have been surprised at the interest this collection has gained and how many sales I have had thus far. 25, 1 tezos sales is pretty good volume for me and my work, so I am glad to see others into it and asking questions. Thanks to all of the party people who have bought one, and all of the party people who will buy one in the future. I also wish you all luck in the secondary markets!
To conclude, I will borrow a line from my favorite Empress and remind that this art I yapped about above, it is for sale, and you can buy it, with Tezos, and it can be yours! No one will stop you.
The collection “A Penny” can be found here -
https://objkt.com/collection/KT1K1Vr44uSbcP5h68xW7eQQMQQUPJTBuNU1
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