Welcome, welcome. Hey, Shira.
Hey, nice to see you nice to be here. How's it going? Yes, it's going good. Thanks for accommodating that bit later time But I'm excited to have you here. I was just gonna play a song and just have us tweet out the room
and DM some friends. So I know it is NFT NYC. So I know a lot of folks are going to be busy with that, but you know, we press on and we're going to have a great chat today and I'm very excited to be speaking with you in particular because I'm a huge fan of you as a human.
And I did get a chance to meet you at the last NFT NYC. So that was pretty cool. So now we get to talk online. So I'm gonna go ahead and play a track and let's get some folks in here. I just want to say the feeling is mutual and it was so nice to see you. It was so nice to meet you in person.
at last summer at NFT NYC. Yeah, I love it. It's nice putting the the PFP to the face to the name and all that in person. So yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm James and folks. Me too. And if anybody in the audience
wants to do some folks or otherwise get the word out there. Oh my god, I'm like pretending to be host here. No, dear thing.
Welcome everybody. Welcome, Shira. We are super excited to be chatting with you today. Oh, look at that. I plug my headphones in and it doesn't mute me anymore. It's just an act of the universe now. Things work without updates, I guess.
Jam everyone. Thanks for joining. We got a lot of friends here. We got our Jedi, we got Timber Donkey, we got Lois, we got so many people. Apple Toss. I never say your name right. I feel like I'm always messing it up. But yeah, shout out if I didn't call your name. I love you.
love you just the same appreciative for you guys to be here today to talk with somebody who I think has been. You have a lot, you got a lot going on like you, like your stories that I've heard like personally. You've overcome a lot and you're very creative.
generous souls. So I've always appreciated having interactions with you. And I'm speaking of generous souls to Trish just popped in. So thank you for being here and please everybody feel free to tweet out the room. Like I said, I know where everybody's busy. This is NFT and YC, but I'm in
YC and I just came home to talk to Ashera because she's an important person in the space. So thanks everybody for joining us and thank you to Nijikit for hosting. Today we are chatting with Ashera Fox. I can't wait to talk to you about what you've been up to but before we chat, just
little housekeeping. Firstly, there is info on NiftyKits v7 launch up top and also our diamond contract. So to learn more about how you can use NiftyKit tools to become a grader, you can just check that tweet out up top. This space goes for about an hour
So we're going to go a little bit over because you started a little bit late. And if we have time towards the end of the space, if folks have questions for Asira and she wants to take questions, we can open up the floor then. So just hold your request. And then secondly, just a friendly reminder that we host these spaces.
every week and our next space will be next Tuesday at 12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and we're going to be talking with House of Web 3 about fashion and luxury and fashion at ease, so you don't want to miss that space. So with that, we
are talking with artist and creator Eshira. We're going to be talking about her work, the community she's built around her work, here in Web 3, a bit about her current and future projects and how her journey in the space began. But before we dive in, if everyone can quickly take a moment to check out some of the
tweets above, you can follow along as we talk about her work today. And assure please feel free to pin any or add anything additional as well as we go along because I just want to make sure that we're representing what you're working on and things are current. So welcome. Thank you for being here today. How are you?
Thank you. I am doing well, thankfully. You know, I feel a touch of FOMO not being in New York, especially because I had such a great time last year in June. It was June, right? Yeah. Just like some people and getting to, getting to meet you, getting to life.
just run around New York. Like I spent, I spent many years in New York and that was many years ago. And you know, it had been a little while since I had been back, especially like without kids and like on my own. So it was just super sweet to
to run around the city and see how much had changed and how much nothing had changed. I'm super happy to be here. Thank you so much for hosting me. It's really nice to see all the folks in the audience who are here.
appreciate it. I know that there's like so many other things that you could be doing with your time right now. But you know, and also Jessica, nifty kit. Thank you so much as well. And I'm glad that this is being recorded because that's cool. I'm glad you can do those things.
We live in that way. And reshare to I always forget when I'm in spaces. I'm like, I should be pamping this out like weeks later and reminding people that I did this room because I am one of those people those weirdo obsessive people if I missed a talk like I'll just heart it and go back and try to look
into it later. So yeah, just like a PSA. Share your tits. Not only totally sorry, I'm like totally also I'm a sheerah interrupt us. I interrupt everything. Okay, so not only do I go back and listen to them, I actually I have a
I have a DM chat with only myself that I have pinned to my DM chats and I will send myself the you know the spaces that I want to go back to just a little pro tip there because otherwise like I just they end up getting
lost for me and I always like, I'm always like, "No, I wanted to hear that." And there's just so many. So yeah, I actually have a pinned DM chat with myself that I utilize very frequently. So yeah, I don't think it's weird, Jess. I think like, can I call you Jess?
Yeah, you could call me Jess. I pre-MFT space. I did not allow anybody to call me that unless they were close to me, but I was like, it's fine. Like everybody calls me, you know, Jessica and then my family. They call me Jesse, but yeah, friends that are close call me Jess. Yeah.
I was supposed to be a boy. And it come from a Jewish family. So like I'm one of two girls. And so that was not popular. There needed to be boys. But here we are. We're two gals. So it's all good. But yeah, thank you everybody for joining us.
today we're talking with Asura. She's amazing. Many of you in this space know her. Please retweet the room or tweet out the room and share it and DM your friends. So yeah, just getting into it. Asura Fox is a maximalist, mixed media artist working to bridge lifetimes of messy edges
and creating beauty at a chaos. She uses personal ephemera, fiber-based mixed media and skinography to create digital photos of physical collages commenting on physical art in the digital age. So you have an incredible story that
I was mentioning before, just the lifetimes you've lived. And I think that's something also that brings a richness to your work. And you have some amazing art I was looking on known origin, and we'll get into that.
For those of us who are just learning about you as an artist and the work that you're creating in your own words, I would like to just go back for a minute and talk about your IRL background before you entered Web 3 and then a little bit about what brought you into the NFT Web 3 world.
Sure, I mean my you know my question back to you is how far back do you want to go? I do have a very I don't know is the word like storied history without the appropriate I'm not sure I have I have a history I have a history
in a lot of different worlds. You know, I grew up in a very extreme religious environment. I grew up actually Hasidic, Hasidic, Orthodox Jewish in Los Angeles, which was its own like super weird
of thing like to grow up, you know, essentially supposed, like I was supposed to have like horse blinders on my whole life, like not really look at anything to the sides of me or anything around me, I was supposed to just be living like this very sheltered existence with like, you know, only really
interacting with the community that I was raised in. And, you know, for people that know me, like even as a little, little kid, like that just, it just wasn't, it just wasn't my life, you know, like, and I knew from when I was very
little. Like I remember thinking really clearly maybe like around six or seven years old that when I was old enough, like when I was old enough to not do that, I was not going to do that. Like I was not going to be my life as soon as I had
the ability to like choose for myself. And I knew that really young. And so I think that a lot of my young life was both desperately trying to like hold on to my sense of self and my sense of you know
like kind of what I was interested in or like what kind of like delving outside I would read I would kind of like get my hands on books you know I'll go to the library and I would like borrow all these books and you know read whatever I could and I
I was always making mix tapes off the radio. It was the 80s and I had a radio. I would always make mix tapes off the radio, but then I would have to hide them. Because I wasn't allowed to listen to non-Jewish music.
like my, it was hectic, it was really a pretty interesting young life to, as an adult now with decades under my belt of processing and trying to understand and
you know, and really understanding like where my family was at too, you know, and like understanding that, you know, they really were just trying to do the best that they knew how to do it, you know, given their own circumstances and their own understanding of life and the world and, you know, the universe that we're in. You know, we all
I was gonna say we all have families and you know most of us do some of us do not but families you know families hopefully even in their messed up ways hopefully act with you know the best intentions for the rest of the family but that's not
always the best for what for who the people in that family are. And so, you know, I was just that kid that was like, this is not my life. And so, you know, I remember being really little and just driving through the streets
of LA, like, you know, being driven around like for car pulls to go to school. And it was the 80s. There was like graffiti everywhere. And like, you know, murals and like, just all this like beautiful, super colorful, you know, I was
living just a couple miles if even like a couple miles south of Hollywood. And so once I kind of, I was going to say once I opened my eyes, but the truth is that I don't think my eyes were ever closed. I think my eyes were always open.
and that I was just always sort of searching for how to bring whatever I was seeing, you know, into my world that I was having to be a part of in some way that was not going to make me like
I don't know. Like someone who, how do I say this? Like, you know, like someone with like, like if somebody was doing things in that, in that world, if somebody was doing things that they like weren't supposed to be doing, like listening to non-Jewish music or reading books that they weren't supposed to, like that kind of
stuff, you know, kids got kids and it's true like kids would get like kind of like a bad reputation, you know. And that was people's reputations were really, really important in that world because it meant a lot of things for the future of like that person's whole family, which
wild, you know, but I just never wanted to be a part of that system. And I always knew that I didn't want to be a part of that system. And so most of my young life was really just me trying to figure out ways to learn
about not being part of that system. And, you know, I had all of my little rebellions and I would sneak out of the house with, you know, sleeves that were too short and I got into all sorts of trouble over like things that I'm sure every person in this room would like laugh at, you know, because
because they're so not an issue to most people, but in that kind of world it really is. And so, you know, I made a lot of attempts to sort of be okay with the person I was supposed to be, but it
It just never worked out. And the last time I really tried to do that, I was 20 years old and I got married. And thankfully I left him before it turned 21. And thankfully and by
left him I mean divorced. I got engaged on my 20th birthday. It was like a full on super religious thing. And about eight months later, I think with my last little bit of like my last little bit of self.
I didn't know which way was up at that point. It was pretty intense, but I left my ex husband. Thankfully, this was
very interesting. Thankfully, my parents were very supportive of me leaving. And so when I did leave, I had a place to go home to. And so I stay, you know, but I knew I knew I couldn't stay there. And so that was when I moved to New York. And I
I became entirely not religious, got myself into college, became a bike messenger and an artist. I mean, I'd always been an artist. I'd always have like, you know, just that sort of inquisitive curiosity,
you know, kind of just always messing with different materials and I was always a photographer like I was that kid who would like I got it I got a co- what was it a a Kodak like the one ten film an Instamatic I think it was an Instamatic a Kodak Instamatic
And I would like I would like I would make my parents pose like I would have them pose for like portraits with you know with like my little sister's doll I hated dolls. I was never like a doll kid But my sister had dolls and so I would pose my parents You know, there's like we still like these photos
I was always shooting photos, I was always like, I was very interested in video and documentary stuff and just, you know, all sorts of, I just wanted to see everything because I knew that I had been so sheltered and I knew that there was just like this whole
whole entire world of so many different existences, possibilities like just so much. And I just wanted to learn about stuff. Like I was just so curious. Like I remember
one of the very first non-Jewish songs that I heard was The Song Shout by Tears for Fierce, who by the way is still one of my most favorite bands. I love them and I've seen them a couple times and they're incredible and when I heard that song I think I would
was maybe six years old and I had a walkman of some sort, maybe my older brother had given it to me, but I was listening to this, I was listening to shout and my little baby brain went, whoa, whoa,
like I really like this song. Like what else is there that I might really like? You know, like there must be a lot of stuff out there that I have no idea about.
what. And so I think that's just kind of been like the way I've operated, like the way my personality is the way, um, just the way I am. Like I just, you know, for the most part, I really like people, I really like, um, you know, just seeing how how stuff works and how things inter
and all the different ways, you know, all the different possibilities of everything. And, you know, and that has really carried over into my art, like in everything and everything, in everything that I've ever done. You know, like I would shoot photos, but then, you know,
I didn't want to just shoot photos, I would shoot slide film and then I had this Polaroid slide printer and I would print them. I was making these like, you know, these Polaroid transfers and like just like all this, all this stuff in ways that I could mix techniques and
mediums. Ceramics was one of my very first art loves besides photography. I was really lucky that I knew somebody who she wasn't exactly in the community that my family was in, but she was in an
sort of like in a Jason community. Also like pretty orthodox Jewish but a little less crazy excuse me. And she had a ceramic studio and she I think it was my maybe it was
my senior year of high school, maybe it was like that summer or something. We did a trade where she gave me keys to her ceramic studio and I helped with the kids classes and I helped clean up and I helped do studio stuff.
and mix clay and like all that kind of stuff. And so when I left my ex-husband and I moved to New York and I got myself into college and I had no idea which way was even up at that point. Like I was just, I mean,
Like when I tell you that I left that guy like when I left him like with my last Little scrappy little bit of self Like you know like that part that like makes you who you are And like you know like we can go through life without that, but it's like
like those people who do that are kind of like, they're like kind of like dead people walking, you know? And I know that if I would not, I don't even know how I left him sometimes, like it just was like this kind of thing where it was like, something outside of myself almost like just took
sort of took that control and was like, "Okay, you're out of here." I really took a while for me to kind of just get my bearings in life again. I wasn't even 21. I had no education to speak of. I went
to like this boarding school for high school and Massachusetts that was kind of known as like the wayward Hasidic Girls boarding school and it was like it was it was it was let's just say the education like actually
education that can help people like be, you know, contributing members of society, like was not their strong suit. Like the highest mass that I ever had in high school was like algebra one. Nobody prepared, like nobody, there was nothing about like
SATs or you guys should go to college or like anything like we had to figure all that stuff out for ourselves if we wanted to do it. Well, they're not they're not prepping you for yeah, they're prepping us for a different totally different life. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm like totally like just going way way too.
- No, I love it. And I also think there's something interesting here too, because you and I share the income and that we are both Jewish, but I would say, you know, I'm more on, for people who don't know, there's different types of Judaism and different types of Jews in the world.
Um, and I'm more like I guess whatever step below conservative would be like we call ourselves Christmas tree juice. Yeah. Cause you kind of celebrate all the holidays, but then we more like we keep customers or something. Yeah, definitely like I would say even a step below reformed. And what I think is very interesting about
your story too is that like you had this innate curiosity and I feel like that is a very cultural thing in a lot of ways for our culture for a lot of cultures I'm sure but specifically because I'm talking to you about this right now is that you know I was very much raised and I know many of the Jews around me were raised
you know, if you go to Yashiva or whatever if you're a boy, like you're taught to question the Torah, your taught to question everything. And that's why I think there's this idea that there's, you know, the Larry Davids of the world that are these like neurotic, like Jews in pop culture. Well, it's because
We were taught to literally question everything. So when it comes to art and it comes to your journey, it's like you were questioning that innately and then you have this wonderful curiosity about you. And I wonder, were your parents very nourishing to this creative side of you at a young age?
So, you know, they were within certain parameters, you know, like, and I think that your point is really true, like, you know, especially in the Asheva, which is like religious boys school, where there's a real, you know, like,
It's really about learning and learning these texts and there's these texts texts and there's you know rabbis who are like hundreds of years apart who are like arguing with each other in like ancient Aramaic you know like it's wild and these you know these modern I'm essay modern with you know loosely
But these, you know, these, these boys, these men in like 2023 are studying this stuff like inside the books and other languages and like, you know, there really is this, you know, a thing about like questioning and all that. However, it is, it is the questioning, it is questioning within
certain boundaries. And so those questions within those boundaries within that context are okay. But if you're questioning, if somebody's questioning outside of that context, then it's definitely not okay. And I was that kid who was like, well, you're calling yourself
I just saw you like, you know, do this other super shady thing. So like, what's up, you know, and nobody liked that kind of thing. But see that's all you're like, you're raising the questions like I read this article a while back, I have to send it to you. It was like, why Jews will never be part of your cult or something like that?
like that. We were already in the cold. Right. And we'd be the person asking questions and maybe like get this person out of here. Right. They're asking too many questions. But I do want to ask you some questions about your art, given such a nice foundation. So you mentioned yourself taught.
And you work across all these different mediums where when you arrived in New York and you were doing photography and then you were dabbling in ceramics, where were you drawing inspiration from at that time?
I first got myself into college and I first just was like, okay, like I landed in an alien universe, you know, I landed in an alien universe and I don't know which way is up and I'm just going to take classes that are interesting to me because I have no
I don't even know what the options are. I don't even know what to ask, you know, like, and so I just started taking classes and I took a sculpture class and I took a ceramics class and my inspiration has always, you know, as I look back, my inspiration has always been
like honestly the streets, you know, like everything that I saw around me in Los Angeles that I wasn't supposed to see, like driving down Melrose Avenue in the 80s in LA and seeing like, you know, like the actual punks, you know, not like the mall
punk. Like seeing all of that culture, all of that stuff around me and then moving to New York. When I first moved there, I lived in a neighborhood that still is just people of the sect that I grew up in.
And that neighborhood if you are white you are probably a Hasidic Jew and and you know and that that was it, you know, and so like I was in this I was in this really weird space where I was really looking to like
I just wanted conversations and so I was this like weirdo that was starting conversations with all these people I was not quote unquote supposed to really be talking to and so all of that just everything you know I think I think that I
a very porous sort of human. I have good boundaries but sometimes they're sort of everything, everything that I see, like I don't know, I think that there's a lot of people that can kind of like hold boundaries from
from the from their surroundings in some way. I don't know if I'm making co he I don't know if I'm being cohesive here. But I think that I'm in general a very like sort of porous person and everything sort of comes in unfiltered and part of that I think is because I have ADHD.
which I didn't know until I was in my mid 20s and I didn't do anything about until I was in my mid 40s, like until a couple years ago. And so I didn't really, I think that that's just been just part of it. I think that every single thing that I've ever
seen or experience has always been coming out, coming through my work. So when I moved to New York in those very early stages of figuring myself out again, it really was like everything that I was coming into contact with. Just like, I mean, I'm
thinking back and like I can think of like specific conversations with people that I had like on subways, you know, and and just walking like the first class that I signed up for with some like random sculpture class, like ceramics class, and I think it was in Chinatown in New York.
And like that was the first time I'd ever see like you know like those barbecue like those naked barbecue ducks that are like hanging in like some of the meat shops like in some of those areas and like I'm just like all that all that stuff that I was supposed to kind of
kind of just see in some weird religious filtered way that just kind of all came back out. And I think that's, I think that's just what my art, what I do with my art in general. Like I think that I think that a lot of times I'm just trying, I mean,
not a lot. Yeah, like my work is really just me trying to make sense of all these different parts that don't really make sense. I mean, thankfully for all of our drama and
know relationship whatever like I'm pretty close with my parents now you know it took a damn long time excuse my language you know took years of of like super intense you know like I don't know my dad didn't talk to me for months at one point like there was just so much stuff you know but at the end of the day like we kind of
made our way back. There's all this stuff now that I have to kind of put through my work because of just I don't know, like all the different ways that I move and light
that doesn't that don't really make sense together like when you just look at them side by side you know I don't know does that make sense yeah I was like I'm looking at your work as you're speaking to and it's kind of interesting to like see these works with you kind of narrating how that you've been basically since you at
abdicated, let's say, orthodox living that you're sort of processing and taking in all this information and then you're creating art, you know, you're expressing through this lens. And I think that that's so, it's so interesting.
So layered the work is layered. So it's like the more you talk about it, the more insight I get into the pictures. I mean, that's why I like having these conversations too, because if I were to just look at, for example, I'm looking at what we have pinned up top where it says jam jam hi, I'm a share. So like I'm looking at some of these works and it's like, yeah, you can feel like the#
you can feel like there's a lot going on, you can feel like there is like a conversation happening with these pieces. So hearing you talk about your background, it's like so intrinsically linked to the work that you make. So hearing you kind of, you know, talk through that, I think, is really fascinating. And I do want to talk
I do want to hear about the work, but if you could just briefly talk about how you entered into a web 3 and then started, I don't know if this particular work came first or came after, but yeah, at CLDR on the
on the genesis of what you've been creating with this work before we get into specific projects, which is kind of how you arrived in Web 3. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, like many of us, I found myself on Clubhouse in the beginning of 2020.
21 in January. I had been, you know, I've gotten a little bit into crypto in 2017, you know, I did a bunch of like shit coin, you know, ICO style, whatever, like all that kind of stuff and like it really, it didn't really hold, it didn't
didn't hold my attention at all. Like I got really bored. It was cool. It was fun. I love learning about stuff. So that was super fun to learn, trying conceptualize what the heck this magical internet bean money is and all that kind of stuff.
You know, I'm I sometimes I wish I was more motivated by by like straight money, but I am not really you know, so like that side of things didn't really hold my attention and Somebody suggested that I get on clubhouse and you know early 2021 I'd never even heard about the app
But I posted on fan, I knew I had, I knew that if there was something that I had somebody on Facebook that would give me an invite, you know, like no big deal. So I had an invite by like, I don't know, a couple hours later and I jumped on and you know that I have a couple kids, but not everybody in the audience.
might know that. And at the time, I had a kid who I was doing Zoom kindergarten with. And it was brutal. It was the height of the pandemic. And kindergarten is not meant to be done on Zoom. And I had a little
little baby. And so I would just sit with like an earpiece in my ear, listening to clubhouse rooms while desperately also trying to like help my kid like with kindergarten stuff, you know.
And the kindergarten stuff, like I hate to say this, I love my kids, they're amazing, but like I'm not that mom that's like gonna get on the floor. I mean, that's not true actually. I do get on the floor and play with my kids. But I'm just like, I don't know, some parents are like, yes, I'm gonna homeschool my kid and it's gonna be amazing. I'm not that person.#
maybe in my 20s would have been that person but I'm not anymore. And getting on clubhouse was it was a revelation, it was a lifeline, it was a, I didn't even realize how starved I was so starved for art conversations specifically because it had been
a number of years, like I was always kind of like in my own world, making my work. And then especially after I had one kid and then especially after two, like, you know, it's hard to keep up with. I couldn't be, you know, going out to gallery openings all the time or like, you know, really making those in-person connections because I had
two little babies. And so finding clubhouse, especially during the pandemic, finding these art conversations and then very quickly sort of, you know, discovering learning about NFTs, it was, it was, it was a revelation. And I, all of a sudden,
it became this thing for me of like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I can do, I can do what with what now? Like you're telling me I can do what? And I can, I can delve into like the digital work that I never wanted to like, you know, do because I couldn't really figure out
to make it feasible for like this world in some way, like, and I know that, you know, and I'm also like such a physical, you know, tactile type of artist that, you know, like, I would play with digital stuff, but I didn't really go anywhere with it. And then once I discovered, and I
of T's and I realized, you know, that this, this could, like, I didn't have to go to like a post office during the pandemic or like shuffle kids around and like, you know, like, just, it just, it was such a revelation. And then combining, like, it made me, it made me like swing
back around to crypto and get real, real curious again. Because all of a sudden, it wasn't just like random money stuff and like money markets. It was like, it's art and I can do stuff with it and I can, you know, bring in all the
I can bring in more things to the way that I make stuff and I always I always love I love bringing in new things to the way that I make stuff and figuring out new ways to work and how things how I can combine things and so NFTs just made like so much sense you know but I was
real slow with my movements. It took me a while to wrap my head around the conceptual aspects of NFTs, especially because I'm such a physical art tactile type person and artist. And so it took me a while to
to figure out how I was going to make NFTs make sense for me and my work. And so, you know, I minced my first piece. I learned about NFTs in January and bought my first NFT from another artist.
in March and then I didn't meant work until May. And I had so many people that were like, are you kidding? Just meant something. Just meant something. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. And they had a point to some extent. But also like, gas was crazy. Do you remember how much gas was like, I don't know.
I remember the first piece that I bought, I spent more on gas than I did on the piece. It was offensive to me. I would rather be giving this to the artist than to some random whatever. Then I was like, "Okay, well, let me look at Tezos."
So I actually minted my genesis, my genesis NFT of all time is on Tezos. And NFT be just bought it. Like it sat there for like a solid couple of years, which I love so much. You know, like most people are like, oh my god, oh my god. And I just like, I just knew that like,
You know, at some point like I love that piece so much and I knew that at some point the perfect person was going to come around And they were going to want it and they were going to grab it and I didn't even really like tell very many people About it. I don't think like I minted that first piece on Calamant Which I think is still in beta like two years later
I don't know. And then I minted some work on Hickett Knock. And then I minted a few pieces on ETH. And then I pulled back because I could see that I was trying to find, I was
trying to find a way to sort of like make NFTs make sense in my work and they didn't yet. And so I didn't want to, like everybody, that was like at like the height, like when it's like Bordea, Biot club, first like an
announced that people had rights to make derivatives and stuff like that. And so everybody was making derivatives of Bordeaux, yacht club and all that. And I'm like, look in and I'm like, I mean, I could try to do this. This is cool, but this isn't the way I work. This isn't interesting to me. And I did some fun stuff.
But I mostly stopped minting and I, you know, because I didn't want to just like make my artwork and then turn it into NFTs. I wanted to make NFTs make sense for my work and do something that I was not, do something that I wouldn't be doing otherwise.
And it took me a while and I ended up serendipitously helping Roboto's launch. I met Pablo, I think like in mid July of 2021 and we just became friends.
And you know he asked me to help and and so I did you know and that was wild and that kind of like gave me like a little bug and I love community like I'm such a community person anyways. I've always been a community person. I've always liked like people are
are so interesting, you know, like as someone who's just endlessly curious, I like people, you know, like they're just endlessly curious. There's so much going on all the time. And so it was really fun to like work with robados and do that for a little while. And I did not watch, I did not watch my sleep. I did
not watch my food intake or anything else and I got severely burnt out. That was a real notice for myself. I kind of put myself on notice after that. We have to fortify our boundaries for the space. I thought that I had
boundaries and you know like I had to really fortify those and then once I felt like my boundaries were like more fortified and I you know had less burnout I started working with toy bookers and I helped toy bookers launch and I worked on that team for like almost a year actually no I'm a
you're more than a year maybe. And then, you know, and I kind of set my own work to the side, not personally. I was obviously still making work. I'm one of those people that like, if I'm not making work, like I'm like going, like it's not healthy for me to not be making work.
Like I like it's you know, I know like a lot of artists are like this right like we have to be making work or we don't feel good like it's not like hell it's not healthy for us to not be making our work. And so I was always making work, but it took me a while to really sort of figure out.
how I was going to work with NFTs and with the stuff that I'm doing now. I feel like I really just, I'm in love with the way I'm working. Frankly, I love the way I work. Well, I mean, it definitely shows and I was looking at some of the pieces that you have.
Currently, I know in origin, you got floating, didn't want to, and Balanced Act. Can you talk about these works? Maybe talk about them in the context of, you know, traditional art making versus then, you know, envisioning these pieces in a digital space.
you know, you mentioned something about that earlier and what you were just saying and you know, just the physical component versus the digital piece of it now. And if you might speak to some kind of, you know, the way in which you've experimented, even like just your feelings around it.
Yeah, totally. So I, you know, pretty early on in the pandemic, when I realized like I needed to be, you know, putting more work out digitally and like maybe like making prints to sell, you know, like what is it called? Like when you draw, you know,
You know, like when people just buy prints and you don't have to do anything with it, like when you have like a web service. Oh, like, yeah, I know what you're saying. You know, I mean, right. I could just drop. Drops, dropping, dropping, dropping. Yeah. So I was like, all right, I got to like, you know, get my work in like, like, I have to get my work#
digital, I have to make my work digital so that I can get them to so I can have them available for print, right? So I bought myself a really nice scanner because I tend to work fairly small because I do a lot of work with my sewing machine. I paint and
I have been doing for many, many, many years. And then I will pull from those painted and dyed pieces. And I will sew papers and make these little paper collages from all these different bits of paper.
And so and the sewing machine, you know, the other part of my work is the sewing machine that I use is actually my mother's sewing machine. So that kind of like ties ties into a lot of stuff with my work to. But you know, as I was working with my scanner, I started
I started to, instead of making the pieces and then scanning them, I started making work actually directly on my scanner. So I had these tiny bits of pieces of paper that, you know, I've been painting and dying over the years that I've been
I've been using in other work with resin and you know other stuff on wood panels over the years and I've never been able to throw any of that stuff away. Like I have bags and it's like a little bit crazy. I don't know, two decades now, I have bags of
bits of thread and stuff that I've like pulled up off the floor of my studio and scraps of papers and you know little bits of of a femura and like you know like like I'm looking at my desk now and I have like you know up this is like in a sound super weird. I have like a little pile of
of my cat's whiskers. You know, and I have a Metro card and I have my ID card from God. What year is this? 1999 from Burow of Manhattan Community College. And like I just have like all this stuff that just stays
You know, it's just stuff that feels like it's a part of me and like I need to use it and other stuff and so I've always just kept all these little bits of stuff and I have you know I have like you know ziplock bags of this stuff. It's like super weird.
And so I started making these these pieces directly on my scanner and I would like lay out, you know, different pieces of paper and different threads and little bits of, you know, silk screened whatever and like maybe like I have here like a slide from, you know,
a slide that I shot when I was living in Brooklyn like, you know, 20 years ago. And, you know, and so I was laying all this stuff out and just building these pieces directly on my scanner and scanning them. And, you know, and they would make like these, I have a very high risk scanner, which I
door. It's like it's my best friend. I love it. I would marry it. And so, so I started playing with that. And it gave me more freedom because I'm an artist that actually like
really does not like drawing, I do not like drawing, I don't like drawing, I really don't like drawing. I don't like when, how can I say this?
I don't always love it when something is like, when I make a mark and it's like super permanent and I can't like, I like to move things around and like push papers and push threads and just like figure out a lot of times like my hand, my head is kind of has to catch up to my hand.
And I like that process a lot and I like when you know my when I'm doing something and then my brain goes oh yeah like you're doing that thing you know and it takes my brain a minute to kind of like name what I'm doing or like see even see what I'm doing. And so my scanner like which is what I'm doing.
worked so well with for me with that. And so I was able to like make these, I started making these pieces like these full on like collages on my scanner that, you know, that I would take apart as soon as the piece was done. And so I started making these pieces and then I started
Like pushing them around like while they were scanning and playing with like, you know, different body parts and like what is just that sting that I loved what what else can I do like okay cool like this works like this like what else can I do like awesome this works like like oh like if I move that all of a sudden I'm getting like these
like I'm like cracking these rainbows, you know, from the scanner, like out of like my hair, like I put the side of my face on the scanner because I'm a weirdo, like 12-year-old who wants to like, you know, you know, like when you put your butt on the, I mean I never put my butt on, I always only put
put my face on on the, you know, whatever, whatever it's called the copy machine, you know, so like, so I was like, you know, like just kind of like moving stuff around, like putting my putting my like there's one piece that I have that has like my ear in it, you know, and just seeing like how all that stuff worked. And then I realized like, oh, like I can
I can do a lot here. I can all this stuff that I've been like all these pieces and bits of my being that I've saved from decades that whether it's like these threads that were from one specific, like the studio
So that was my bedroom at one point, you know, like that place had carpet and I would like pick up all these threads off the carpet because I don't know why, like I guess I'm obsessive like that and I just I liked all the colors and I liked the way they looked and I didn't want to get rid of them and I knew that at some point, like I knew that
I know that they're a part of me and at some point I would need it. And so, you know, I knew I was super excited about this way of working that I had like discovered for myself, but I also know I've been around long enough to know that like there's nothing new
under the sun. And if I figured out how to do this for sure, there's other people that figured out how to do this and there's no way that I'm the first one that is like making artwork directly on my scanner. So I started doing some research and I came across a word called scanography and it is
away of using your scanner as a and creating a cameraless photo like with a scanner. And so all of a sudden I had like this like a context for what I was doing. And so, you know, like not that I needed a context like I'm super fine, like just with the context of my own
self, but it was nice to have like, okay, this is something that other artists are doing, cool. And so it gave me freedom, the way that I'm able to work now gives me a freedom that I think I'd never really had before.
or not that I never had before. It's an extension, I think. It pushes what I can do a lot further. And I love all the conversations that I'm having within my work in this way that I'm working. I am creating
a piece of artwork on my scanner, you know, but then that artwork is gone, you know, like even if I just pick up the scanner, even if I just open it, like those pieces move, because they're just these like, you know, featherweight little bits of threads and stuff that aren't, that aren't, you know,
are not tacked down in any way. So everything is ephemeral and it moves with it. And the way because they're so high res, you can only see the details if you really, really, really open them up. But most of the time
like we're looking at art on our phones, on our computers, on these little screens, which is fine. But if you look at my work on a small screen, it will look totally different than if you open it up, you know, on, if you project it. Like it's big.
these images that I'm making, they're like obscene large. They're like 14,000 by 10,000 pixels. And so I don't even know how large that I can print those, but I would like to one day and see what I have
I haven't even seen these, like I'll zoom in, I know what they look like, but I haven't even seen them as large as as I would like to to be able to see all the detail in one shot. Like I'm curious to see what they look like on a giant screen or printed, you know, six feet wide or whatever.
And then, you know, and it's cool. Like I get to play with, you know, like I'm working with like I said like, you know, like I've mentioned many times, like these tiny little bits like when you open up my images, you like the threads can look like yarn and you see all the textures of like the paper and the fibers and you know because I'm working with
with so many different I also love I love paper. I love paper. I love all the different types of paper. I love. So like I'm working with so many different types of papers and so you can see the differences in the paper and the textures and where I tore it versus where I sewed it versus where I cut it versus like all
all these different things. And it just, it just, like, I don't know, I want to make art forever, obviously, like a lot of us, right? Like I'm an artist for life and whatever form that takes. And in my work, like everything stacks, all of my, you know, I think
as artists like the way we train our eye, the way we develop our eyes, you know, just over the course of our lifetime. Like all of that stuff stacks and it just like everything brings us to like the next level and I just I see so much about, you know, every single
place I've been having led me here and, and, you know, NFTs, like what I can do here with my work just makes like so much sense. And so I've been really content to take it slow. Like I know, you know, not to
sound arrogant but like I know my work is good you know like I know I know that I'm here for the long haul I know that I'm never gonna stop making art I know who I am and and it's and I'm perfectly fine
like, like, wait, like, kind of doing things at my own pace because I know I'm here. And so, like, when I tell, like, like, I'm actually like drowning in work right now. Like, I have so much, I have, like, I'm working on like four collections simultaneous
And I kind of have to like like that's my issue my issue is that I have like, you know, I turn around and all of a sudden I have like 1200 images that I have to edit down to like 200 or you know what I mean like it's like it's because I could make art like I mean, it's like water like I can just I can make make make make make make make make
And then it's like on the other side of that where I'm like, oh right, like a post-production. You're like, that post-production. I do want to untuck a little bit about because we do have to close up soon. I wanted to down, but I feel like I could talk to you. No, no, sorry.
I could talk to you forever because you're one of those rare artists that really delves deeply into process. And I think that we've been kind of programmed in this space to not talk so much about process, but to talk about the shell of the work. Maybe lightly the concept behind it, but I like the way that you delve into the specifics of things.
the textural way in which you even talk about the work and about the objects and the ephemeral aspects of it. All of that, I find that obviously very fascinating with my background. I think that that's awesome. But as an artist that's working, I would venture to say traditionally, but very
experimentally as well. You know, what do you think some of the freedoms artists can experience as they both experiment like you're experimenting and migrate into Web 3 where we have the possibility of expression outside a gate kept art world and of course your thoughts on the potential
for the things that we, you know, that are out there for us like, you know, royalties, the provenance. And of course, smart contracts. And if you kit, it's a smart contract, you know, toolkit here. So I wonder what you think about, yeah, the freedoms that artists can experience with work on a blockchain.
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, so, you know, I have always been a pretty like DIY, DIT kind of person, like do it yourself, do it together. I've always like shied away from, you know, having to do or be for, you know, it's kind of like the
whole gallery system or like the art world, like the art like the, um, yeah, like, you know, like the whole like gallery system and all that. Not that I'm like, you know, like, I love it. I love going to galleries. I love seeing my friends. It's just never been something that I have been like super drawn to in terms of my own work
because I get so much out of the direct connection with the people that are buying my work or that want to talk about my work. And when I did go through galleries, I found that not only did I not get that direct connection, but often I didn't even know
who was my work. Like to this day, there's pieces where I have no idea who has them, you know? And that, you know, like it's, it's okay. Like I try to like not be super precious with my work, but like also like I would have liked to know who those people were, you know?
And maybe that's, you know, I don't know. I didn't stay in that system for very long once I kind of like understood a little more. So for me, like the direct, the direct connection that we can have to the people that are that are
our, you know, our collectors is so precious to me. And so I think that, you know, look, I think I think the, there's so much. Number one, the fact that we can have ownership and we can follow the kind of
the line of where our pieces are. And of course, there's lots of anonymous people and all that. But eventually that stuff is going to get solved in one way or another. Even now, if people really want to know they can know. But just to have that openness and
and not be limited by what somebody else was telling me about my work, about the kind of artist I am, about who I should or shouldn't show with or be with or all that kind of stuff. I just felt like I feel, not I felt.
like there's so much more like freedom in this space for artists to be and do in the ways that they want to be and do. And I think that there is and there are incredible opportunities here for collaborations. There's incredible. Look, I think anytime there is
a new, anything, right? Anytime there's a new platform, a new, you know, whatever, there's always going to be like, there's always like that first initial group who kind of like, I think like, like maybe get like maybe like a little closer with each
other something and then there's like the people that kind of come after. I think that those of us who are here now are so lucky that we are here now because we get to develop relationships with people that I don't think like I don't think that it's going to be like this forever. You know, like I don't
I think that when we were all on Clubhouse, I think that we were really lucky that we were able to be there in that moment and develop those relationships. Like if you go back to Clubhouse now, it is not the same. You know, and I think that, you know, I think the same sort of thing. Obviously, it's like different with NFTs because there's just
You know, it's so there's just so so much, you know, that that is going on with NFTs at any given time. But I do think that there are opportunities here that that we are that I personally that we are unlikely to find in the same ways.
in other spaces or even later. I think that NFTs give us the opportunity to really take ownership of our work and to be able to show it in the ways that we want to show it and to be able to sell it in the ways that we, and that's not to say that any of
it is easy. I have friends who are like, "Oh my God, tell me how to do all these things." I'm sorry, are you kidding me right now? I will show you.
I don't know. I can help you, I can help onboard you. But I can't transfer my knowledge and understanding and relationships of the space that I've developed over more than two years. No, I can't give that to you in
30 seconds of a nutshell. You know, like it's like it none of it is easy. Like it takes a lot, but the opportunities are here. Like the found it like it is it is just so there's just so much openness. And I think that because we are so early and we can say oh no,
We're not early anymore or whatever, but we are still really early and we have the opportunity to help shape stuff in a way that I don't think we have in other areas all that much.
part of the reasons why those are some of the reasons why I am, you know, pretty bullish on NFTs. No, I love that. We do have to wrap up, but I do want to ask before we close the room out, what's on the horizon? Is there anything that we should be washing out for any calls to action?
for anything that you have coming up. Yeah, so like I said, I'm currently working on a few different collections. I'm not going to release them all at once, but I will be releasing work very soon. I actually, I've only minted a handful of things in the last like
couple years. Like I minted two time to dishes one this past February and one in November before that I minted one thing in September and then before that it was almost a year or previous to that that I minted anything. So like I you know I don't have a lot of work
But that is going to be changing very soon. So I would say just keep, keep posted. And yeah, I mean, I'm always happy when people share stuff. All that. Follow the hosts, follow the co-hosts. And I also,
tweet. I have a little badge that I, where is it? Do you know this? Do you know a wordable? Yeah. So, yeah. So I, let me see, copy the link. I'm going to share it to Twitter.
And then I'm going to post it up here. So it's just a cute little badge I made for the spaces specifically. So anybody who's in the space can grab it. And here, let me just post it up right now. While you're posting that if anybody
would like to retweet a Shiriz GM GM retweet that shares more about her work. That would be great. Get her work out there and show everyone what she's been working on. Very grateful to have you in the space today. Definitely want to grab this badge as well.
And quickly before we do close the room out, I just wanted to thank everybody for joining us today. Like I said, I know people have lots of things going on. So I very much appreciate, I've been watching the crown too much. I appreciate everybody being here and so
So appreciate you as Shira for how far you delve into your work, your process, your thoughts, and you know, you're really somebody who has been outspoken in the space and I appreciate you for that as well. And so please follow as Shira and follow NiftyKat.
and I want to make sure that it's okay. You don't have to follow me. I'm claiming your badge right now. How do I do this? I do it with Twitter. So these are kind of like Po-Apps, but way easier to deal with.
So yeah, you can actually log in with Twitter with your Twitter or you can you can actually mint them if you would like to like there's all different ways to log in but I this is I think my fourth badge that I've made and I I love the ease of it. I love that you know we can do images like
up to, I think it's up to two megabytes or something. Yeah, these are just free plans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah, and I like that they have like all different ways for people to claim them or for the for the person who's making it to like, to kind of gate gate them. So like this one, I made it so that
people can only claim it if they're actually in the spaces. So do we have to claim it while we're in a space or did it already capture we were in the space? I don't. I think it captured. I think it captures because I put the link in and then I think it captures. I don't think you have to be in the spaces in order to claim it. Yeah. Because I'll claim it once
we close. If anybody does have an issue, just let me know and I think I can send it to you. Yeah, but Jessica, thank you so much. This is really lovely. Yeah, I don't, you know, I have so much to say about my work, you know, and I don't, I think that I often don't. And so it's really nice to have
the opportunity to speak about it. Because I think like I get so caught up in my curiosity about everyone else. You know, you have to have a moment to showcase, you know, what you're working on. And also, you know, we'd love to have you at Nifty Kit. So when you're ready for the next drop, come over here and do some experimenting too. So well, I have
I have a, I have a, I have a, there you go. And I am going to use an empty kit because I want the, the drop I want to do very shortly involves a blind mint. The pieces are all done. The pieces are like 100% done, but I do want it to be a blind mint. I think that would be cool. Amazing. Yeah.
Yeah, we'll hit us up. We'll be in touch. I will. I'm very, very excited for that. And can't wait to see the work that you're going to be putting out this year, you know, and I appreciate you saying like you've been taking your time. So that's really nice to hear and just really refreshing. So thank you everybody today for joining us. Thank you again to
Shira. Thank you to Nifty Kit for hosting. Follow Shira, follow Nifty Kit, and if you are a creator, please be in touch with me. Feel free to just hit me up in the DMs. And if you want to become a Nifty Kit creator, please check out the pinned tweet above to learn more about V7 and also Diamond Contracts and reach out so we can help you launch your next
and a T project and join us back here next Tuesday at 12 p.m. Pacific Standard, 3 p.m. Eastern Standard, where we will be talking fashion NFTs with House of Web 3. So you don't want to miss that space and with that, have a great day. I'm going to play us out and we will see you next week.
Thank you so much. Thanks, Asura.