Origin Stories #59

0:00 ROGER: Welcome to Origin Stories. I’m RD, I’m [inaudible]. We’re telling stories behind a digital art revolution. Each week we interview top artists and live stream with the community. Let’s go. Today is tomorrow’s origin story.

0:00 Coldie, welcome to Origin Stories.

0:00 COLDIE: Roger, how are you, dude?

0:00 ROGER: Doing well, man, doing well. I feel like it’s a great moment. Been talking about this for a little while. Not too far from… I’m sure we’ll get to this, but I’d like to honor it through the beginning of this origin story: not too far from the passing of a great friend and great artist, Alotta Money. I think that’s timely as well, but we can get to that a little bit later, because your paths intersect. In fact, we were just talking about that off recording. Let’s focus on you for starters, and for most of this. And the big question, Coldie, is: what is your origin story?

0:33 COLDIE: My origin story is rooted in the road less taken, and I think a lot of us can feel that road. And I wasn’t early on, quote unquote, artistic per se. I wasn’t prolific as a four-year-old drawing things. And it’s funny, because I asked my mom recently, she was going through some saved boxes and she’s like, “Do you want any of this crap?” And I was like, “Do you have any kid art I did from school?” And she’s like, “No, you really didn’t.” Like, “No, I don’t have anything.” “Oh, okay.” I guess nothing hit the standard for the fridge or whatever.

1:41 But what really started getting me into art was in high school. I went to a small school in Northern California in the foothills. You would look at it and be like, yeah, just another school. I was in this time and place with the group of… there were like four years of classes that were just dynamite. And since then I’ve talked to the teachers, they’re always like, “You guys are…” Like, we had that vibe, right? And it was everywhere. It was sports, athletics, smarts, creativity.

2:12 And part of that was my longtime friend Wade Wolf. Bless you, Wade. He started a class called Thunder Paw Multimedia. Okay, we’re talking freshmen in high school all the way up through seniors. And it’s actually funny, I was talking with one of my old Thunder Paw buddies last night about this. We were live streaming basketball games from our little gym down to Sacramento. We’re like 15 years old, like, we’re doing these things that were putting us in a place to succeed later. We’re learning these real-world tools.

2:43 I came in there wanting to do… I was on the basketball team, and I wanted to get into graphic design and layout. I wasn’t really a film guy. They had a lot of amazing film people. One of them is a DP. He did, like, “I’m on a Boat.” You remember the kind of the joke, Andy Samberg?

3:16 ROGER: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely remember that.

3:16 COLDIE: He shot all that —. Like, we got, like, — really good talent, and we’re all like 16 or 17. So I roll in there and I’m making the game programs. When you go to the games, got a little rosters and maybe a little story. So that was my class job, was do these for every game.

3:49 And this is where my hustle and keeping the eye on the prize and getting it done started, because I would be, let’s say the tip-off was at seven o’clock, from like 5:30 to like 6:22 or whatever, the last minute I had, I was printing, stapling, getting that — done, right? Literally with my jersey on. And then I would run over to the gym and get ready and go, right? So looking back, that was exactly this in a different fractal, right? Where you gotta innovate, you gotta do your —, you gotta experiment, and then you gotta go. So I think that’s the genesis of me as a creative soul, and getting my chops up and doing graphic design.

4:22 ROGER: Do you have any game programs kicking around?

4:22 COLDIE: —, not right here, no.

4:22 ROGER: But you do.

4:22 COLDIE: I absolutely do, and I know where they’re at. I just don’t think I have them right here. But that’s funny. I’ll post those.

4:53 ROGER: That’d be amazing, man.

4:53 COLDIE: Yeah. And it’s funny, the school had just a little art show. I don’t know what the reason was, whatever. So I did a portrait of a guy I know in class, and so I took the pictures and I did this… Oh, I’ll have to post this one too. It’s the most basic effect in the background, but what I did, which was total full circle, was I took his ear and I enlarged it like three times. And it was literally like a Decentral Eyes move from this portrait series. And I saw it maybe a year ago, and I was like, holy —. Talking about things coming around.

5:26 And that was the start of me looking at people and life in a surrealistic way, right? It was just the first thing, like, well, why does his ear have to be normal? Big thought for me at the time. So yeah, high school was awesome. Like I said, so many talented people. We had like an early Uber… one of my best buddies, Matt, was early Uber, and now he’s at Lime killing it with design. There’s just so many talented people that came out of this little school, and that was really the start of it.

5:57 And from there I went down to art school in Southern California at Cal Poly Pomona, which isn’t known for their art department, but it was perfect. I had adjunct teachers who were doing their — in LA, doing really good stuff, and they needed to pick up some extra money or something, so they’d moonlight and come out and teach a class.

6:30 I got both my jobs out of school. I was working before I finished. I was at IKEA, their in-house designer, so I was in charge of the graphics for the flow of the store and the big entry graphics. And that was pretty thrilling, to be like 23 or whatever the — I was, doing that.

7:03 And then another teacher through Cal Poly got me an interview at LA Weekly, which was really quite funny, because I was wrapped up in finals or there was a bunch of — going on, I don’t know, and I was in some type of mood. I was just like, I’m so buried, like, ah, whatever. So she’s like, “Hey…” I think they all called me Coldie at that point too. They’re like, “Hey, my boyfriend is the lead designer at LA Weekly, and they need a new designer, and I think you would be a good fit.” I was like, “Oh yeah, I got a job, I’m at IKEA, I’m cool.”

7:37 And I left, and I literally drove home like an hour, and the whole time, as I started driving, the gut, my intuition, was burning. It was — burning, and I felt like I was almost getting sick. I was like, what did I just do? I literally turned down a job interview, if nothing less. So I turned back and I drove another hour back right away.

8:09 And I busted into her 3D graphics class that was, like, silent. You don’t — talk in her class, and it’s a dark room and she’s teaching. It’s the real deal. I bust in, Nas, like, nah. She looks at me like, what the — are you… like, “You’re in the middle of my class right now.” I said, “I’m very sorry. We need to talk about that thing that we were talking about.” And she’s like, “Okay.” I just left, right?

8:40 So, this is such a good story. Okay, so I call in sick, the classic thing you do when you get a new job, like, not feeling well on a Tuesday. I drove up from Orange County to… it was on Sunset Boulevard in LA. Awful. Actually, the traffic probably wasn’t bad at that point. Cruised up there. I had my portfolio, back in the day…

9:12 ROGER: Oh, I see it back there, my portfolio case. I feel like you have everything back there. You have the game programs back there. You can, like, honor some things right now.

9:12 COLDIE: So back a long, long time ago, you used to have to carry these things around, portfolio cases. You’d have to print it out, you’d mount it on blackboard, you have to glue the — perfectly. Everything has to be T-squared aligned, because when you go to a job, that’s exactly what they’re looking at. And so I walk in there nervous as —. Like, panic attack, you know?

9:44 ROGER: Sure.

9:44 COLDIE: I’m sweating balls, just like, “Hi, I’m here for the interview.” The guy at the front desk buzzes back to the guy who’s supposed to interview me, and he’s like, “Okay, yep, I’ll let him know.” Click. He’s like, “He can’t see you. He’s too busy.” And I’m at that point super meek, very shy, like, “Oh.” The panic attack doubled. I was like, “Okay.”

10:18 So I left and I drove home, and I felt rejected without even interviewing. So I called her, my professor, Nas, and I was like, “Yeah, they said I couldn’t talk to him.” And she’s like, “Oh no they didn’t. No, no, no, no.” So I got like three phone calls that night: her, the designer, her boyfriend. He’s like, “Oh no, no, please, please come back. Can you come back tomorrow?” I was like, “No, I can’t. I just called in sick at my job.” Like, we got to play this, like, no, — you. Like, “Let’s do it on Friday. I don’t know, I’ll pretend I’m sick again.”

10:50 So I went up there, we sat in a circle, and I pulled out my boards, and we were just hanging out, just three people on the ground. And it was the weirdest design interview ever. And then right after that he’s like, “Okay, see the computer over there? Okay, here’s the article and two pictures. It’s gonna run in the newspaper. Go do something. Just go.” He’s like, “You can have as much time as you… you know, have some time, but I’m gonna see what you can do.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” So, jump into the fire, do something. And I kind of remember what I did, but it was cool enough. On the spot, I pulled something out, and I got the job.

11:25 And coming out of art school and being able to do covers… at the time the readership was over a hundred thousand a week. So I was doing covers, and you walk out to go to Starbucks and you — open the thing and your — is there, right? It’s a very awesome feeling to be in the culture, and that was definitely the dream job. It’s the ones that don’t pay —, but you not only learn, but you network, you get into the culture.

11:58 I’ve talked about Shelley Leopold many, many times. She was my boss at LA Weekly, and we’ve since done the Kitty Bungalow shows together, the cat charities. So that’s where we met. And Shelley is just awesome. One day I was just doing my design thing in my little cubicle, and she comes over and she’s like, “Hey, you’re gonna take the afternoon off. Here’s the address. Go.” And I was like, “What? What’s going on? Do you need me to go shoot pictures for an article, or what’s going on?” She’s like, “Oh no, it’s a pop-up Banksy show that no one knows about. So you can go and just walk in and just own it, and no one’s gonna give a —.”

13:03 So I did that. I walked in there, and there’s people walking around with boxes setting up —. I just started walking around like I was — owning the place. And there was no one in there. It was like the day or two before they leaked it, and I was just chilling and looking at these Banksys as close as I wanted to. There was no rules. And Macaulay Culkin was looking at art next to me. It was the weirdest — thing, but beautiful, right?

13:36 That’s what those years in LA brought me, was intense street culture. Yeah, so many awesome things from that. And from there, that’s where I used to go to galleries, art walks, all the time. And I could barely afford the subway ticket to get there, but I would play collector. I would put on my collector hat and I would walk around these galleries and just start training my eye, right? Like, if I was going to collect two pieces out of this gallery, pick them, right?

14:10 So I would go through and I would just admire everything. There’d be a couple like, that’s sick as —, that’s sick as —. So I mentally collected those, like, okay, you guys are awesome. Never had a means to be a collector, but that’s how I started getting that acuity for, on the spot, just sussing out what would tick the boxes for me.

14:42 ROGER: I’m not heading fast forward now, but it’s no surprise that you’ve become quite a large crypto art collector.

14:42 COLDIE: Yeah, absolutely. It was absolutely built on those days of aesthetic discernment, where it’s like, any art can mean a thousand different meanings to everybody. What does it do to me? And through that, you’re not collecting for anybody else. But if your taste is stylized and curated in such a way, then you start to have a collection without even really trying to have a collection.

15:15 Now looking back, because I’ve been collecting for three years, like, NFTs, it’s crazy how much of it is pretty congruent and makes sense together. And I was like, wow, I really… And it’s funny, because I have little phases. I’ll be scrolling through and there’s like a phase where it’s all these bright yellows and bright blues. Sometimes it’s color, sometimes it’s photography. I love a lot of photography these days.

15:46 But yeah, the LA Weekly days really were the genesis of me becoming an artist. And we can segue quite beautifully, so there’s another thing. I love Shelley, and Shelley challenged my soul on a project. Okay, I think it was… I forget what the project was. But I told her that I was always the designer, and I would get artwork from Shepard Fairey, I would get artwork from Dabs Myla, I would get these awesome LA artists that she knew. Like, she’d say, “Hey, we need key art for the artwork. Just do a bunch of pieces. Ryan’s awesome at collaging, so give me a bunch of pieces, we’ll throw it to him, and he’ll make it work,” right? Which was totally fun, right?

16:18 And one of the projects, when we were talking about the key art… and if people don’t know, key art’s like the base-level creative assets for it, right? So I was like, “Hey Shelley, can I… I want to do the key art for this.” And she’s like, “You’re a designer, you’re not an artist.” I was like, “Okay.” And there wasn’t any fallacy to that. I had not made any art, so fair enough.

16:51 It was definitely a little gut check, and she was probably right. If I did it, it probably would not have come out as polished as getting a true illustrator to draw the assets, right? So she was correct. But that was one of the very key moments in my life, where it was like, oh yeah, it’s almost like, oh, okay, game on, right? And it lit a fire inside my soul that I have never since replicated. And even though we are best friends, I talk to Shelley all the time, there is such a love for that challenge.

17:57 And I don’t know if she was doing it on purpose or not, but it worked. And I took that and I just said, huh, what can I do? And it was true, like, what art would I make? So at the time I was into UFOs and outer space and stuff like that. And I actually brought my very, very first piece… and I started designing it when I was living in LA, because I remember showing it to one of my photography friends down there just to get his feedback and get his two cents on it.

18:30 And it’s funny, because it took a while to fine-tune this piece into something that was art. It took me a while. So in that transition time, I had left LA and moved back up to where I’m at now in NorCal, and living in my parents’ basement, the classic story, right? Literally in the basement. And it was open space, so I had all these folding tables set up. It was my live art studio, and I started creating. And it was just coming out. I had no idea what I was doing, but I started.

19:04 So let me show you the first one. Okay, so this is my first piece, at 18 by 24, some standard size. So the process of what I do on these, it’s a super labor-intensive process called a gel transfer. And a gel transfer, the process of it is: you print out an image on an inkjet and you invert it, you mirror it, so it’s backwards. You cover the piece of paper with a bunch of gel medium, like Mod Podge, or there’s a certain gel medium you use, and you create a little thickness on it. Okay, then you transfer that, you basically glue that onto the canvas and let it dry, and you got to burnish that — down. Make sure it’s all on there.

20:07 Let it dry, then you take a sponge and you slow as fuckly burnish off the paper, so that all that’s left is just gel that the ink soaked into. So to do one of these, first of all, it’s impossible to do it without… like, you can see there’s this part here, totally flaked out. Like, there was a bubble and I rubbed too hard and [inaudible], gone, right? You can’t fix it. There’s no fixing.

20:38 So right away you start looking at this thing and you have to come to terms with the reality of what’s in front of you. I’ve already spent probably, at that point, 30 hours burnishing, and this thing flakes off, and then you’re kind of held with: is this okay? Is this my intention, or do I start over? And I kept going because it was my first one. I’m like, — it, dude, I just gotta get something done.

21:10 And I don’t know how it came out as well as it did. It was total first-time luck, because I got a bunch more back there that didn’t come out as clean. And I gold-leafed it, and it came out good. I don’t know, it was the universe. I truly believe it was the universe saying, this is a good thing that you should keep doing. And I’m much that way. I don’t look for messages, but I truly feel that sometimes they’re sent to you, and you have a chance to acknowledge or not. If you don’t acknowledge it, who cares. But if you can see those things, like a little billboard that drives by, like, huh, okay. That’s what that piece was, and that’s my baby. That will never be sold.

21:44 ROGER: So that was my question, actually. When you’re in that process of creation, your first artwork, and you’re thinking about, is this a message, do I keep going, is this my intent, do you have an intent as to, I am creating this for this purpose? Are you creating it just to see if this road is right for you? How are you thinking about it?

22:16 COLDIE: I have no purpose for creation. Creation just has to come out. For me, it’s the process of the art making, and it’s therapeutic to just get something out there and have a process and work through the goods and the bads, and just come up with something. But at no point really with anything I make, unless it’s a commissioned group deal, is there an end goal. It’s more or less going down the path and coming up to the stopping point. And that stopping point sometimes is 10 minutes in; that stopping point is sometimes 10 years in, right?

22:49 And it’s discerning the stopping point, and sometimes you restart them, right? But there’s checkpoints along the way where I’ve learned that you’ve got to stop and art direct yourself and critique the — out of it and get down to brass tacks. Not for what anybody else wants, but for how is it feeling for me? Am I enjoying this process? If I’m not, then I should probably change what I’m doing, because that’s free time. I’m not going to be doing something shitty in my free time. So those types of things, especially if I’m not feeling it, it’s exciting. It’s like, okay, how do we ramp this up?

23:20 So kind of based off of that project, I can kind of show you the iteration of how I went from looking at what I was doing and taking it to a different direction, right? So again, the first one was standard, and these are all stereo 3D, which I’ve always had the passion for. I just — love stereo. So, stereoscopic gel transfer. I’m very, very stoked with that one.

23:53 So I make another one, and all I know at this point is gel transfer, because I want these things to be respected not just as graphic design but as art, right? And that’s especially… these were like 10 years old. Very hard to get into a gallery show without something being on canvas, straight up. Way harder sell. You could do a print, but to me that’s not hitting the mark, right? So that’s where all this… and I learned this process at Cal Poly, this gel transfer. So I’m going to talk about the one before this.

24:57 So what I started doing was blowtorching the art. And it was partially done because another piece right around this time majorly got messed up. We’re talking the whole upper 30, 40 percent, total fail. Like, total fail. So much so that I took the canvas, and I remember the trash can I set it in. It was trash, and I was done, right?

24:57 And I looked at that canvas, and it probably sat in that trash can for maybe five minutes. It sat there. It was like we were having a conversation, and he’s like, “Are you done?” And I said at first, “Yep, I failed.” And he’s like, “Did you fail?” “Yeah, totally, totally failed. That last one came out way better.” And then the problem solver in me jumped in there, because I literally had spent probably 40 or 50 hours burnishing. So it was an ROI on time. I’m like, am I really going to throw away this 50 hours of time? That sounds stupid.

26:05 So I pulled the canvas out, and I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t think about it for a while. I was like, I need to blowtorch this thing. I need to cut the part out and burn it. I don’t know where that came from. I had never seen art that was burnt. I never thought about burning —. But I did it, and that piece sold in a gallery, my local gallery, and it blew me away.

26:38 When they called me and they’re like, “Your piece sold,” I was like, “What?” Because in my head, that was in a trash can two months ago. And I sold it for 600 bucks. I got a check for, I think, 420 bucks. I thought that was just rad. I got a check for 420 and I was stoked, like, oh my god, a piece of art. I got paid. I didn’t want to get paid. It just hung somewhere and someone decided they wanted to take it home.

27:10 So I live in such a small town that I knew who the buyer was, through my mom’s friend. Small township. And she lives in the Bay, and I’ve talked to her a little bit, just thanking her, and she’s like, “Yeah, it’s just the weirdest thing. I love it. It’s just burnt, and it’s a cool little piece.” And I was like, “Dude, I’m so happy that you have that thing.”

27:10 And it’s funny, like a year ago my mom was like, “Oh hey, so-and-so is going to go see your sister,” like, the one who has the art, “do you want to pass any messages or anything?” And I was like, I need to talk to this lady. All bragging aside, do not give that to the Goodwill. Thank you for buying my art. The early patrons are really the ones that matter, and she really was my earliest patron. And that piece has such immense meaning to me, and I had to urgently let her know, like, that thing is so important to me and what’s come from it, that, treat it well, and if you ever get sick of it, let me know. And she’s like, “Wow, that’s really rad.”

28:16 So yeah, so I just started burning other stuff. So I started burning this with the gold leaf, and this one got juried into a show, a national juried show, by a really well-known art critic, Mat Gleason. He runs a… it’s called Coagula Art Journal, and it’s been around for probably 30 years. And he’s a classic art critic, but with a solid spin. He’s not just a — talker.

28:49 So I was just so stoked that I got juried in by this guy. So these are all little things that were just like, keep going, just keep going. It’s just like the checkpoints. I didn’t sell any of that stuff. I didn’t care. But I can tell you how proud I was to walk into that gallery and see that on the wall. I was like, ah. Those are the good feels. And I didn’t care if anybody looked at it. It was just like, we did it. That little journey succeeded.

29:22 And soon, kind of soon thereafter, probably within a year or so… And if I made one of those, if I was on a production schedule, let’s say I was trying to crank them out, we’re talking a couple months. So I might be able to do four or five in a year, if I did. But these are more like once every six months.

29:53 ROGER: So real quick, if I can stop you there. What fascinates me so much is your perspective that early, right? How you’re treating your artworks that early, when they do take that long. You’re creating the first one, you’re saying there is no intent here, you have a fire burning based on what Shelley told you, and now I want to take my crack at it. But then what you produce, you’re saying yourself, I’m never selling this, this is mine, this is mine. Then you have the epiphany in the trash can, right? Sell that artwork. But you immediately have the presence of mind to go to your patron and say, like, “Hey, if you have to change your heart here, give me a call. Don’t you dare do anything where this artwork is removed from the world.” I really appreciate that. I appreciate that presence of mind.

30:25 COLDIE: Yeah, it’s funny, because I’ve done it again. I bought my own Genesis NFT back. And I’m not trying to buy that piece back from the lady by any means. But I have the art I make… if it doesn’t check the boxes for me as a collector, right? It’s kind of twofold. If this thing doesn’t stand up good enough to hang on a wall, then it’s just… it needs to hit that spot. And that’s hard to explain until you get down the road and you — burned your canvas and you can’t go back. You just got to keep going.

30:59 At a certain point, I feel good about this. And as you know, we can noodle projects forever. There’s literally no end to any graphic design or any art piece. You could keep going forever. But the other skill is knowing when to stop and make a new one, right? Because I’m all about iterations too.

31:33 So these ones are done. They got me to being able to go to R.A.R.E. Art Labs. And when I went there in 2018, the stuff that I was making… so, back again, I was into outer space a lot. And a lot of that was just, I needed a subject matter to make art to. It just needed a theme. And I think it was very cool, but it’s funny, because it’s a time and a place for me.

32:05 So I was doing little street fairs in Sacramento. We wouldn’t get into any shows. Me and my cousin Aaron, who made me even think about art, bless Aaron, awesome guy, we would go to art walks in Sacramento and just busk on the side of the street, literally with a suitcase. I’d pop it open, get my 3D lenticulars, put them on the side of the wall, and we’d, like, smoke weed and hang out, just — around. And with the same… no one cared. We were just having fun out there.

32:36 And I was doing these… this one’s called Pyramid on Mars. And I have a version, I’m gonna make some more of them, where this part lights up with LED lights. It — pops. And that was an early pre-NFT thing. And that was the first step, actually, a lenticular being digital art, kinda. Because the great thing about these things, they’re fake-proof. You can’t make these. I would love to see somebody do that. It’s impossible.

33:10 So I was making these things. So when I went to R.A.R.E. Art Labs, I had a catalog at least of what I’d done until that point, because I didn’t have anything else, right? So it’s the same as LA Weekly with my box of boards. That was stuff I did in college. So all you can do is show the best of what you got at the time, and have the inner love for yourself that this is as good as you are right now, and you have to use that.

33:42 There were plenty of pieces, even in my college portfolio, that, yeah, they’re not great, but I needed 12 pieces for that interview. So you better believe you kind of stuff them in the middle. And there’s a whole talk to all that. You got to work with what you got, right? So that’s what I did.

33:42 And with R.A.R.E. Art Labs, it was the same thing, where I sent them some stuff, and at the time it was not hard to get in to a marketplace, because there just wasn’t a demand. And I just got in, and it was very, very easy. And it was freeing because, especially way back then, there was no buyers, there was no nothing. No one gave a — about it. And it allowed me to just create some things, and every single one was an experiment.

34:48 I did an edition of 10, edition of 50, I did an edition of 25, different price points, trying to make sense of this thing that was basically the same to me as online dating. Like, you make a profile and you put your stuff out there, and it’s the same thing to the universe. You throw it out there and maybe there will be a connection, but if not, it just kind of hedges. You’re kind of putting stuff in different baskets.

35:19 So that was a basket I did, and it was just for marketing. I was like, well, maybe more people will see my stuff on here. Like, cool, I’m just trying to be out there. Nothing sold. I mean, I probably sold pieces to maybe the owner, so the guys who ran the company, like, “That was pretty cool, I’ll pick that up for 35 bucks,” or maybe a hundred dollars. Well, no, no, 100.

35:19 I sold two pieces to a guy who was just an awesome dude. I hustled an art show at a very small crypto event in San Francisco in 2018. We’re talking real small show, like two rooms. And I hit the guy up and I was like, “Hey dude, I’m up the hill. I would love to pack my car full of my — and give you a free art show.” And he was like, “What, really?” I was like, “Well, do you have anything for your guests to look at while they’re drinking and networking?” He’s like, “Well, no.” Like, sounds like you need me just as much as I need you.

36:27 And he’s like, “Thank you, yes, please.” He opened up the room, I came down, I think it was the morning of, I just — ran in there, set up my easels, and it was done, right? So I had my own art show. And there were some important people that were there, because it was so early that the people who sought out this tiny little show were there because they wanted to get in. And one of those people was this guy who bought two pieces. It was an NFT version of this one, and then, oh, is it here? Nope. Another one, it’s called Underground, Underground Energy. It’s about underground pyramids that power the earth, obviously.

37:02 So he was into pyramids and stuff, so he bought one of each of them, and they were 100 bucks each. And there were no sales. The Vitalik, my first Vitalik 3D one, no one touched it the whole time. And at a certain point, R.A.R.E. Art Labs decided it was a smart business move to change from 8% commissions to 40% commissions, and just let us know, by the way. Oh, by the way. I did not take that one too kindly.

37:34 ROGER: A bit of a leap.

37:34 COLDIE: Oh yeah. Not even like, “Let’s have a vote,” or “What do you guys think?” It’s like, by the way. So, by the way, I rage burned all my —. So I was like, ah, okay, homie don’t play that way.

38:07 So I did this calculatedly, because I had sold maybe, probably at most, one or two of each of these series, some of them none. The Proof of Work never sold. That’s the one that sold at Bonhams. And the Vitalik never sold. So I burned those, so I had free, I could re-mint those. They’d never been sold, right? And the ones that had been sold, I burned all the remaining tokens. I didn’t even keep any for myself, which was kind of a dumb move, but I was protecting my collectors from the day, from that, always, but especially then.

38:38 So that guy at the show who bought two things for a hundred bucks each, I think the edition was probably 25 or somewhere around there, now they’re one of ones, right? And that’s the least I could do, because it was the exact same thing as all these things we’re talking about: the early patrons and the support. And I can’t tell you how proud I was to sell NFTs in an IRL art show. Like, those were all just worth it. I was just like, damn, killing it. You made 200 bucks and it probably cost me 250 bucks for the trip. I was like, great, dude, we won.

39:11 And so I — rage burned all my —, and then I got into SuperRare, and that was kind of like a transition time over to those days.

39:11 ROGER: It’s an amazing story. I mean, it’s a good backstory of so many things you’ve mentioned thus far along the way. Going back to the game programs, and then walking it forward to enlarging the ear, and then walking it forward to Shelley’s comment that fired you up. I’m walking it forward to how you started walking into galleries before you could afford things, and that discernment, that collector eye. There are all these genesis elements to your story. I really appreciate how you’re walking us forward through this, and then this becomes a really interesting genesis element of you ultimately taking care of your collectors. And from everything that I’ve learned about Coldie in the past year and a half plus, I’ve seen that in present day.

40:15 COLDIE: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all building blocks. And at the same time, these are all experiments too. I don’t know what the response will be. I mean, I assumed it was a slam dunk to help my collectors, like that was an obvious one, but there was no precedent. It wasn’t like something that people were doing. I just, again, trusting my gut. Is this the right move? Trust your intuition.

40:15 ROGER: Absolutely. I wanted you to say it, but like, we’ll get to that one, and I want to talk about that piece.

40:47 COLDIE: But there’s threads in my life that are around things like gut, your intuition, and discernment that I was always testing myself to improve, because I don’t think you could master discernment. Like, I could tell you a hundred thousand stories when our discernment was incorrect, right? But that helps you grow, right? So it’s all part and parcel for the same growth. And with art especially, I just take chances. Calculated risks. Sometimes you win, sometimes you fail.

41:20 The coolest thing from the R.A.R.E. Art Labs, I have to say, was Coinbase headquarters. They had some deal with, I think it was Meural, Meural frames, and Coinbase picked two pieces from all of R.A.R.E. Art Labs to have in their headquarters. And they picked The Day We’ve All Been Waiting For, this guy, this piece. Yeah. So they have that in the headquarters, and that’s just super sick. That was just a little bonus round thing where, cool, again, just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

41:52 So SuperRare came around, and I was already minting, and I got in. And it’s funny, if you actually look back at my early works, which I’ll actually pull up now just so it kind of helps me a little bit, but I remember that I was concurrently minting on both of them for a little while, and I was just experimenting. Like, Johnny Dollar is another quadruple OG in the space, and he made his own smart contract. It’s called Artist Unleashed, or I think it was Unleashed. And he’s like, “Hey dude, love your stuff. Would you like to mint on my Artist Unleashed contract?” I was like, “Hell yeah, let’s do something.”

42:59 So I literally minted this piece on his contract, and it has never sold. I still own this thing. It’s a Vitalik Buterin Variant 3, and I’ve told people it exists. At the same time, I don’t really need to sell it, but it’s so funny that it’s gone, it’s like three years old. Yeah, three years ago I’m into this thing, and it just is sitting there.

43:31 It’s the archaeology we were talking about off camera. For sure there are sharks in the waters now. Like, literally, as soon as something is discovered, like Plasma Bears, which I somehow was able to get into that chaos. I was looking at Plasma Bear pages for like four hours one night. We’re talking like 200 pages of bear parts. And I don’t know what happened, but the universe blessed me, and I got a full set of XCOPY Plasma Bears. And a foot, I found an XCOPY foot. I was just going, I didn’t care what the — it was, and I was like, that has to be an XCOPY foot. So there’s sharks, including me. I would consider myself a shark, because I have visual acuity.

44:04 ROGER: You were training for that moment.

44:04 COLDIE: I’ve been training. The sniper eye is there. And I miss, I miss times. I mean, Bored Apes would be an example of not quite seeing ahead enough, and you win some and you lose some. But those were one of them, like, hey, those things were like 100 bucks or something at one point. Pretty damn cheap.

44:39 I don’t know where I was going with that, but I think that the sharks in the water, like with this Vitalik piece, it’s just sitting on OpenSea. Literally anybody could type in “Vitalik” and “Coldie” or something and it would come up, but I never get offers or anything on it. It’s just, it’s great, it’s kind of funny. It’s just like, yeah, it’s there. It’s there.

45:13 ROGER: We’re gonna pause this interview. I’m just gonna, I’ll be right back.

45:13 COLDIE: Okay, yeah.

45:13 ROGER: No, I’m going to go bid on your piece.

45:13 COLDIE: Do what you got to do, dude. Okay, that would be so funny.

45:13 So yeah, I have that piece I never sold. And during that time, so I did that one piece, and then I was on SuperRare, because R.A.R.E. Art Labs, that whole thing, I’m not going back there. And I actually did, for my t-shirt project, which we should also talk about.

45:44 Then I just started creating on SuperRare, and I did my Proof of Works. I started getting into, I’m really into variants, because I wanted to do this portrait series, but there was no way to just do one and be done. It just didn’t make any creative sense to me, because things come up, and then you’re like, how do you get all your thoughts into one Vitalik? That sounded like an awful decision. So I started doing variants, and it worked out great.

46:17 Because some of these variants, actually my genesis piece, is an absolute happy accident. The piece itself was stereoscopic, the red and the blue, and I was in the process of turning layers on and off to export it, or I was in some type of phase where the face was built but I was doing some process, I forgot. And I turned a bunch of these layers off, and I stopped. I was like, whoa. Like, whoa, I did not plan this, but this thing looks sick. Save it. Save the JPEG, keep going. And I wouldn’t mint it right away. I’d just be like, okay, that’s a variant, keep jamming. Just because I had a plan in place.

46:50 But every once in a while these little things like discernment come up, where you’re in the flow, but at the same time you’re also like, check, check, check. Is it time to stop? Is it time to stop? That whole art directing yourself, and curating kind of this piece. This was one of those things where it was just too cool. And I don’t normally design in that type of color scheme, but it was sick. I was like, okay, that’s totally a piece of art. Who’s anyone to say, “Oh, that was just a process piece”? No, no, no, absolutely not. There’s a lot to that piece.

47:57 So I just started doing variants, and it was very freeing, because I think I did, oh —, maybe seven Vitaliks or something. And each one was always unique. I would never rehash the same thing, and that was important to me. And kind of learning to play with an asset collection, much like I did at LA Weekly, where I have these pieces that work together. How can you start deconstructing them and playing with them in different ways to be unique, but also have this continuity to it?

48:29 ROGER: So seven Vitaliks. Yeah, we’re progressing on. Take us, I mean, take us through. It’s quite an extensive journey. I think what was 156, trying to get the, back off here, a hundred and, sorry, your collection is 159. Your creations are 116. But it’s amazing. It’s amazing to me. We see a lot of artists who have recently started, and you go to pages and you see 2 or 7 or 11. But someone who has been doing this and really has been paving the way for multiple years now, it’s fun to see 116. It’s a better scrolling experience. You see things evolving, you see those variants evolving, and you start to go from point A to ultimately point F.

49:02 COLDIE: Yep, yep, yep. Absolutely. And it’s the beautiful story of early crypto art too. Especially me as an artist, I actually felt a little bit looser back then to just do one-off riffs. And that’s something that I struggle with so much. And whether that means I make a fake name and I put some — out, or I have a B-side collection, there’s a lot of stuff that I have, like little one-liner art pieces. It’s not part of a series, but it’s a jam. It’s a riff that should be out there.

50:10 I was doing that back then just because it was fun. No one was buying —, and it was a little bit like, not that there’s any stakes, but now that I’m in it and doing series, I’ve kind of boiled down what I release, because it’s just easier to control, and I can spend more time. It’s less output, but higher quality, I would say. Well, I shouldn’t say there’s no quality differences, but just a different mentality at three years in.

50:42 If I look back to my early ones, I made this piece, which I love. It’s called Trolling Hard Work. Oh, it’s like, we had troll dolls at the house. I took a picture of that troll doll, and I put the Bitcoin Cash on there. And it was during, these things are all times and places, where if you were there at the time of the Bitcoin Cash, like, trying to flip Bitcoin, “It’s the real one,” and no one knew, to be quite frank. I was hedging. I was like, maybe, I don’t know, who am I to say? So I made that piece just for fun. I’ve never done any other troll art, but I love that one.

51:16 So there are different experiments I did. For San Francisco 2018, —, that was so much fun. I got to see Vitalik talk, which was amazing. I did these posters for the show, a print, I made printed posters, and I was selling those, and then I made five NFTs of those, and they’re all individually numbered. So I was experimenting with series, numbered prints on SuperRare. It was a free-flow time.

51:50 And it’s funny, because some of the pieces are just like, I did one for Tesla. There’s a light bulb, and I love it, but it’s just an ode to Nikola Tesla. It was just like, okay, it was great. But I was in a phase also where I was trying to challenge myself to do design charrettes, where I would say, “Hey, you’re gonna make a piece tonight, you’re gonna mint it.”

52:21 ROGER: Good challenge, right?

52:21 COLDIE: Varied results.

52:21 ROGER: Varied, I can imagine, at best.

52:21 COLDIE: And I would mint them, and I would say the Tesla one would be in that zone where I was making some stuff and that would pass the test. I burned some that were up there that, after a week or whatever, I was like, not feeling it, not hitting it. I actually probably forget, I don’t even know what those were, to be quite honest. I should check the SuperRare burn wallet and see what jewels are in there.

52:54 But I think that looking at my SuperRare page, it’s a chronology of my creativity, and just going from one thing to another, learning new tools. And a lot of it for me is, I’ll try my best. I am not a software savant. I know the processes that get me where I need to go for my styles of art, but at the same time, I don’t know Houdini, I don’t know 3ds Max, whatever people use. That wasn’t my jam. Since day one, I was a collage artist. I was a Photoshop guy, and I’m kind of okay with that. It lends to what I want to get across.

54:00 But at a certain point, when I wanted to make my 3D camera stuff, I literally have mints on here where I would screen record my screen and I would drag with the mouse off on the side, and it was like performance art, because I was literally dragging the mouse and watching how it moved in real time. And I would record like 20 of those just to get the right, there’s like a Disneyland ride, like, oh, it’s left, right, left, right, up, down, swish, whatever —.

54:32 And at a certain point, that’s all I knew, so I would tokenize those. I knew that was not an effective model for doing these long term, so I had to learn After Effects. So it’s fun to look at them, where it’s like, oh man, he went from GIFs to 3D Photoshop screen record into After Effects. Like, no, that’s a progression leap that I had to take the time. I mean, luckily we have tutorials everywhere, right? So you just have to try and put a little bit of time in there to learn it. But then you have this new toolkit, and that invigorated everything I did.

55:07 Then it was like, the portraits were in After Effects. I did a Proof of Work Redux, which, just because I had these new skills, I could be like, holy —, I can make a landscape out of this now. It wasn’t just a locked perspective. I could kind of show some sides. I want to pull that piece up. We haven’t talked about a lot of, but it’s really interesting, this piece. Let me find it here. Proof of Work Redux, I made.

56:12 And all of these times when we’re making stuff, I was looking at a lot of Alotta Money’s art. And the guy, I mean, talk about genius. And he was doing the same kind of thing with collage, and he had the After Effects animations coming in. It was Christmas —. And when I made this piece, it was a challenge to myself to try to get somewhere to the quality level of the things Alotta would do. And this is a direct influence.

56:45 Like, this is like in the ’60s, when the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones and Van Morrison, everybody was cranking out their jams, and they were listening to each other’s albums, and it made their music better. That’s exactly what we’re all doing right now. And I’ve had those talks with, like, me and Fewo jam on that one all the time. I was like, “Fewo, you are inspiring me so much.” And it’s just like, everyone’s vibing.

57:18 And I think that is the healthiest ecosystem for artists: to be vibing on everybody else’s — and not comparing or judging or expecting. And we’re humans, and we’re kind of built to have some of those thoughts. Personally, as soon as I can get any of that out of my brain and just admire and look, that’s what pushes me to do something like this Proof of Work.

57:50 And I had a little drone fly in, and that was a total — homage to Alotta. Like, it was that thing that he brought to the table that no one else could ever — with, and I don’t know if anybody could, forever, for eternity. Like, he is that look. And that’s what I take from the artists that are around me, because I try to pay attention.

58:22 It’s much harder these days to pay attention to everybody. I mean, it exploded. It used to be on SuperRare there might be five new artists a week or something, so you could kind of get a gauge of who’s coming in. Now it’s 200 a day or something. It’s just, it’s beautiful, but you can’t keep up. So back then.

58:22 ROGER: So it’s funny, the day that we’re recording this, which is March 11th, is one year from the Beeple auction at Christie’s that went for 69 million dollars.

58:53 COLDIE: Wow.

58:53 ROGER: And the reason I’m dialing that up now, not only because today is that day one year later, but that was the last time I thought it was possible to keep up.

58:53 COLDIE: Yep.

58:53 ROGER: After that happened, right in that range of time, things just exploded. And they had their slow-down period, they had their peaks and valleys after that, but I never again thought it was reasonable to literally be up on everything that was happening.

58:53 COLDIE: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the Beeple effect is very real. Very, very real. That was actually pretty cool. I had a chance, I was talking to him before he [inaudible] it, and it was an urgent, I was like, “Beeple, I need to tell you some —. Like, homie to homie.” Because I knew his importance in coming in correctly, and I just had to lay out some things that he needed to be aware of. Some of those public information, some of those private information, where it was like, “Hey, X, Y and Z could, and probably will, happen. If that happens, look at solution A or B. If this happens, think about that. Hit me up anytime.”

59:58 And I wasn’t trying to consult for the guy, because for a while I was doing consulting. Just too much. I need to make art. It was just way too much to do. But for him, I was like, “Dude, homie to homie, I don’t want — from you. I just want you to succeed.” And he’s like, “Damn,” he’s like, “thanks.” It was so funny. NFT.NYC, I bumped into him, and it was awesome to just have a face-to-face moment with him, because it’s just like, this is awesome. It’s not in the flesh. And he looked at me, he’s like, “You —. Everything you told me came true. Everything.” And he’s like, “How did you know?” And I was like, “I’ve just been around the game.” And he’s like, “Thank you.”

1:00:32 And that’s all we need, is just really look out for each other and just give advice. Be open and pay it forward. Like, hoarding knowledge, I think, is the most selfish thing in the world, and it holds back other people from thriving, literally. So it was the same situation. He didn’t need me to help him. He’s Beeple, he was gonna be fine. But those things that I knew were like, you lift up the doormat and there’s all the dirt you need to know about. And it wasn’t anything specific, it was just general. You wouldn’t know unless somebody told you. So much love to Mike. He’s a great, great guy. And ever since then, like you said, the whole place just exploded.

1:01:39 ROGER: Yeah, what a wild ride, huh?

1:01:39 COLDIE: Crazy. Really, really nuts.

1:01:39 ROGER: But I love some of those names that you’ve mentioned. You mentioned Alotta Money, you mentioned Fewo, you’ve mentioned Beeple. And I don’t know, there’s some commonality here that I’m trying to wrap words around, but they all collaborate to various levels. I would say Alotta collaborated all the time, like all the time. Fewo less, but still there. Beeple not much, but I still feel like there’s an openness to all of their art. I feel like they could jam in those conversations that you’re mentioning and be very much part of a healthy art ecosystem.

1:02:12 COLDIE: Yep, yep, yep. Absolutely. And we’re in a slower period of NFTs, and at this point, I think this is probably my, I wouldn’t, I don’t call it a bear. I don’t believe in bear markets for art. That’s so simple-minded. That, to me, is a dumb way of looking at all of this. Like, yeah, maybe people aren’t buying, but the art is — fantastic. Like, maybe if all aren’t coming out with shitty, then I would say yes, we are in a bear art market. But what you see is who sticks around.

1:02:45 And I can tell you, every single cycle there were people who were killing it when it was hot, but then they disappeared, sometimes never to come back. Sometimes they come back when it’s hot again, and I don’t care. But it’s a little bit of a barometer check of, how in are you? Are you gonna be here when no, are you gonna be minting when no one’s buying? I mean, that’s kind of what artists would just keep going and doing.

1:03:19 So we’re in another one of those phases, especially with this immense onboarding. I don’t know the numbers, I don’t know if you do, but we’ve got to be talking multiple tens of thousands of artists, I don’t know, and PFP projects. Like, the amount of tokens created, it’s almost akin to the US dollar. It has absolutely exploded.

1:03:19 ROGER: Well, I think Alex from OpenSea just posted the other day that tokens created are now outstripping websites. So if you go back to the rise of the internet and how many websites would explode all over the place, it’s now outstripping the number of websites. And he kind of talked about why that was a bad comparison, bad frame of reference. Interesting stuff. And you’re right, I mean, it’s the noise. If you look in those places, it’s like, how can you sort through this when you’re coming into it? But ultimately, hey, people will, and there’ll be aggregators, and there’ll be storytellers, and there will be critics, and certain things will make it through this and have their flags flown for always. I mean, that’s how art works.

1:04:25 COLDIE: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think the game’s always changing. What worked three years ago absolutely does not work anymore. I mean, it’s just always evolving. Now NFTs have utility. Back in the day, you didn’t even have movement, you just had a JPEG. So what we can do with art, I think we’re still so extremely early, and it’s just up to every single person to distill it how they are happiest.

1:04:59 And I mean, even me, I’m working on utility for different projects, especially my DEyes project, the Decentral Eyes Mashups. It’s a whole new world. And really, there’s no stopping you. It’s just code. If you code it, you can do it. So it’s pretty fascinating to kind of be at the beginning stage again. I feel like it’s a new stage of life inside of NFTs where you’re allowed to evolve. I don’t have to do anything, but the opportunity is there. And how does that fit for my art? And it’s not just, “Oh, everyone’s doing that utility, I’m gonna do that too.” I’ve never been down with running with the pack just because it’s the way you go.

1:06:03 So yeah, I’m super stoked to actually kind of get some of that stuff going. And I’ve been working with Manifold on some smart contract stuff, and those guys are just the sweetest, smartest people I’ve ever met. It’s just like, you guys are great. So it’s giving power back to us as well, where it’s not gated, like, “Oh, you’re gonna need a Solidity dev, good luck.” You’re like, “I’m an artist, where do I go with that?” Like, how am I really going to suss out a dev and do all that —? So yeah, I mean, I think the community is just really, really solidifying itself a lot.

1:06:34 ROGER: Agreed. And double down on the shout-out to Manifold, Richard, Wilkins, the whole crew over there. You’re empowering the creator economy right in this era, in the NFT era. I think it’s important, and they’re making it very, very easily accessible.

1:06:34 COLDIE: Yeah, absolutely. And I got to hang out with all you guys in New York, and that to me was such a life moment, getting to be in the flesh and just share space with everybody. And I saw Richard so much that week. And the first time I saw him, I didn’t really know, like, there’s online personas and then there’s when you see a person. I have a hard time connecting sometimes, like, what do they do? And then, because he always has a 3D glasses thing. Yeah, and he’s the 3D glasses guy. And I was like, “Dude, we’re both 3D glasses guys. That’s pretty rare.”

1:07:08 ROGER: Get this. I didn’t plan this, this is unscripted, ladies and gentlemen. The side of my computer, I have a pair of glasses from Richard.

1:07:41 COLDIE: Nice.

1:07:41 ROGER: I have a pair of glasses from Coldie.

1:07:41 COLDIE: No —.

1:07:41 ROGER: No other glasses hanging out on the side of my computer. Unscripted. They just happen to hang right on that side.

1:07:41 COLDIE: And you know what, I’m honored you have those. And the other part about it is, everybody needs a pair of red and blue glasses next to their computer. And that was the bane of my existence, because I couldn’t show all the — that I made, because no one had — glasses. So I had to do the animations. That’s really why I got into animation, was because they couldn’t see the stereo. So you’re one more onboarded stereoscopic viewer, right?

1:08:15 ROGER: I’m here and now, and I can rotate. You know what shows it better? Is it Richard’s glasses, or is it Coldie glasses?

1:08:15 COLDIE: Holy… Oh yeah, no, I’ll get you some red and green frames. Those, actually, red and green are my favorite anaglyph frames.

1:08:15 ROGER: Nice. Little, little Christmas.

1:08:15 COLDIE: Christmas, exactly.

1:08:46 ROGER: Amazing. So hey, so take us through. Let’s go back to your SuperRare, because again, 116 is quite a lot of art pieces, too much to go over one by one. But give us a few more quick-hitter highlights of just what comes to your mind as you scroll, or as you think about it.

1:08:46 COLDIE: There’s a couple pieces. There’s one series that I just love that is actually unsold, and it’s another one of those, I’m not sure if I really want to sell it. But it’s called the Human Nature series. And this project, one of my 3D, my stereoscopic buddies, I found him on Facebook. I was living in my parents’ basement, and I was on Facebook, and it says, like, “People you might want to connect with.” There’s this old dude with a big white beard and red and blue glasses on, and he lived, like, the next little town over. It’s like, I gotta find out what this guy’s up to. You gotta be a homie. So I hit him up. He was, like, the most skilled 3D comic designer ever.

1:09:53 So he would do 3D comic books, 3D posters. And one of his loves was shooting amateur nudes in, like, the ’80s or so. And pretty classy, you know. He would do them like a real photo shoot, and he shot on slide film, like a Realist 3D slide, and an ’80s 3D photo. Like, we’re talking perms, we’re talking… it’s a vibe, right? He captured this.

1:10:24 And he passed away, and he left me all of his —, for better or worse. Like, wow, it was a huge gift. And he’s like, “You’re the only one who would ever know what to do with this stuff.” He’s like, “I love you. Take it, own it, go,” right? So part of that was his entire collection of his stereoscopic, you know, two pictures of nudes. We’re talking thousands. Thousands, so many.

1:10:56 And from that, I’m looking at these things, you know, like the artist in me is like, what do I do? Because I’m not, like, into nudity in art. I mean, not that I’m against it, it’s just not something I’ve ever done. So it’s kind of thinking about how… And also, I’m not a misogynist, you know. I’m not putting porno pictures out there, that’s not my jam.

1:11:29 How can I honor and make this into art? So I started thinking about it, it’s like, well, let’s get the faces off the females. Like, let’s at least take it out of, like, “Oh my God, that’s my grandma,” you know? You’re like, some —, you know. So I was like, okay, we are all this way, like animals just don’t have clothes on. So, even as humans, are animals. So I came up with this series called Human Nature, where one of them has a cat head.

1:11:29 The names of these are so much fun. Cat Call: there was a lady, she was set up in the scene with the phone, like talking, and it’s a provocative angle of photograph, and I put a cat head on top of her face. And it’s all in stereo. You put those glasses on, the cat face is in the correct spot. So there’s Cat Call. Tiger Trap, where there’s a tiger head, and, like, I love that one.

1:12:34 And then the final one was called Game Don’t Wait, and it’s like a double play on “game,” you know, because a game animal is like something you’d shoot, but then, you know, “game don’t wait,” it’s like a hip-hop lyric, you know, it’s a thing. And that’s a zebra head on top of the female that’s on this, like, floral motel bed. It’s just so good. So I honored Roger. I just totally honored the guy. This is a collab in…

1:12:34 ROGER: Wait, was his name Roger?

1:13:07 COLDIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. My OG buddy Roger, Roger May. Prolific dude. Zany as —. We used to… all the light paintings, that’d be another one we could talk about. I did a series of Bucket T, like classic car, 3D light paintings. So me and Roger would go camping in the Desolation, like way out of any light pollution.

1:13:40 And we’d go camping, and we would bring… well, this one, not, we had to go to the car. But we would go camping in general, bring our LED Maglites and —, and I would bring my 3D camera, and we’d do long-exposure light painting. And there’s actually a piece called The One, which is an early-ish one.

1:13:40 We did a light painting in the middle of the night. I had a strand of Christmas lights, white Christmas lights. There’s a little, like, lump of… it probably used to be leaves where they just piled up, and over time it became a mound. And we’re riffing, we’re like, “Okay, you stand on top of the mound, do a lasso of lights. I’ll have sparklers, I’ll run around you.” And then Roger’s like 65 at this time, right? He’s a — wild man.

1:14:44 He’s sparkler running, then he gets the purple flashlight and he’s painting around the base. And I’m up there just trying to stand still, because I know I want to keep my body as still as possible so it’s not, like, this blur. So I’m lassoing this — huge strand of lights, getting the torque and momentum going. And the camera could only shoot a minute. So after that minute was over, we’re back to total darkness, and we walk over to the cameras.

1:15:18 And it took just as long for the camera to process the data, because it got a lot of light information. So it’s the camera thinking, like, “What the — do I build?” You imagine the strain of the camera, like, “You —… I’m supposed to make a picture out of this,” you know? So we don’t know what’s going to happen. So we’re looking at two screens, and they have to match. If they don’t match, it’s a worthless 3D picture. So we’re waiting a whole another minute, and we’re just jazzed, like, “What’s it gonna be? What’s it gonna be?”

1:15:51 It shows up on the little screens and we scream. Every single take, we were screaming, because it was performance art, it’s totally experimental. And that one literally was the only take we ever did of that. Wow. And that was it. So that one has a lot of meaning. The name alone was like, it’s the one, that’s the shot, and we moved on. I would have loved to probably do a couple more, because there’s the cropping, there’s a couple, like, artistically… but it wouldn’t have been the same. So, yeah. Bless Roger.

1:16:23 ROGER: That’s so… I didn’t put that together, but yeah, [inaudible]. Shout out to Roger May.

1:16:23 COLDIE: Yeah, yeah. Amazing man.

1:16:23 ROGER: Well, we have to talk about Trust Your Intuition. You know how I feel about it. That’s my selfish moment in this entire interview. But it was one of the Coldies that absolutely spoke to me. It’s one of my favorite phrases in life, one of my favorite beliefs in life, and, as I later put together, an art piece that you put quite a lot of effort into.

1:16:56 COLDIE: Yeah. I think this is maybe my best composition to date. I don’t judge one piece to another, but just the way it came together, the colors, the movement, the meaning, and the opportunity, all make it, I guess, like an opus type of piece. Something I’m just very proud of that came together.

1:17:28 And kind of the backstory was, Pranksy hit me up and he’s like, “Hey, I’m gonna do this thing called NFTBoxes.” And, you know, Pranksy is Pranksy, you know, he’s just prolific and experimental. And he came to me, he’s like, “I want you to, like, lead this off, if you want to do it.” And I said, “Well, give me some details.” He’s like, “Oh, it’s an edition of 500.” And my soul quivered. I was like, “Oh, oh God.” Like, up until this point my highest edition was like 21.

1:18:00 You know, so instantly it would probably triple my token count. And I’m a scarcity type of thinker, you know. I’ve since a little bit evolved, but I like less is more. Less is more, or less is more. But I thought about it. I said, okay, if I’m going to do a project that has 500 of them, I have an opportunity to have a message. I have an opportunity to connect with people, and not just have some random 3D loop. Like, that doesn’t do it for me.

1:18:00 I’m a storyteller. I want there to be a theme. I want there to be something that, when you’re done looking at a piece, you can take away. Whether it’s just beautiful colors, cool. For me, I wanted something more overt and obvious. And what we were talking about was those billboards that pop up throughout life, where it’s like, you know, when I, I don’t know, burn my piece, and it was like, “Oh my gosh,” like, oh, I paid attention and I looked at the billboard. So I literally put a billboard, right? And I put “Trust Your Intuition.”

1:19:08 So it’s just like, I wanted to knock people over the head a little bit. And not saying you have to, but just to know that it’s there if you so choose. And if it does come up and you feel a feeling, that’s an honorable feeling. And I just… there’s so many pieces. I actually did, on this last New Year’s… there’s quite a story behind this one. Have you, did you read the thread about this one?

1:19:40 ROGER: I don’t think so.

1:19:40 COLDIE: Okay, oh, you’ll love this one. So it was New Year’s, eight, nine, eight years ago, and I was in downtown Sacramento, and I was going out to the bar with my homie, do the New Year’s thing. And it’s like a family event. There’s people running around the streets. It’s the old Gold Rush district, so literally gold miner buildings, brick roads, wooden walkways.

1:20:14 Without the new signs, you’re still in the Gold Rush. And I think that there’s a lot of, like, energy from the Gold Rush that is still there. Whether it’s straight-up ghosts and spirits, or just something very historical, and, like, deep energy is baked into those streets. And it’ll make sense once I tell the story. Okay, so we’re hanging out outside. I’m just people watching, enjoying myself, kids walking by.

1:20:47 There’s this couple who walked right by me and walked down to this underground tattoo shop. It’s like, oh, cool, awesome, what an experience, you’re having a great time. And that just goes in my brain, right? That little thing was like, pop, and I was like, cool, tattoo shop. Then, not more than maybe five minutes later, I hear, like, a rattling sound. There’s, like, a bang. And my first thought was, like, a kid hit a stop sign, you know, that kind of sound it’ll make, because, I guess, kids will be kids, you know.

1:21:19 Well, about 20 seconds later, I see mothers fleeing, dragging their kids, running, and I was like, that was not somebody hitting a stop sign. That was some —. Instantly I figured it out. Like, we got a shootout. So there’s shots in the bar, literally across the small cobblestone street. This is not, you know, Sunset Boulevard. This was like 50 feet, you know, something really close. So I crouched down behind a wooden trash can.

1:21:52 And I’ve taken science class, and I know that’s probably not going to help me too much. I’ve seen that. So my roommate was crouched down as well, and I looked at him, I was like, “Nick…” My intuition said, “You need to run downstairs to the tattoo shop,” right? It literally was like, I didn’t feel it, like, just the —: “You need to — run.” Like, it literally said that. I was like, okay. I was like, “Nick, I’m running. I’m getting up and — running right now.”

1:22:23 And it was live fire, right? So as soon as I stood up… I’m 6’3”, like, you pop up. So he’s like, “Dude, yes, yes, let’s do that.” So we ran downstairs, and we brought this grandma and her grandchild with us, because they were down there too. We’re like, “Follow us.” We were little, like, angel sherpas, right? “Come.” So we all ran downstairs, and the tattoo shop guy sees us in his little hallway and he’s like, “Get out, you know, you can’t loiter here.”

1:22:56 And I just had the face of, like, fear, and I just pointed up. I was like, “Uh, uh.” He’s like, “Okay, you’re good.” And we didn’t even talk. It was through a glass window. I was like, I’m not going up there. He’s like, “Okay, cool.” The shots get louder. There’s a whole nother round. There’s, like, five more, pop, pop. Like, whoa, I was not expecting more. And the cops weren’t even there.

1:22:56 Like, I have so much empathy for war in the world, and my heart goes out to everybody who’s affected by war, whether it’s directly or indirectly. For those two seconds, I was in a war zone, and it was scary as —. And the cops came. You heard the sirens, the loudspeaker. You knew, like, — wasn’t going to keep going, you know. It was safe to get up. So, talk about panic attacks. I was like, whoa, I’m done. Emotionally — drained. I gotta go home.

1:24:02 As soon as I walk up out of the tattoo steps, this girl runs out screaming. She’s like, “Someone’s been shot in the face.” And there’s a trail, like, into the pizza shop. Like, this — was real. I won’t go into all the details. I found out from a live… they interviewed a lady live on TV, and I happened to see it. It was synchronicities amok. It was nuts how it all played out.

1:24:35 It was crazy. I went back to my house, and I went to the store to get some beers, because we need to — chill out. And there’s a live cam from the street that I was just at. This lady’s telling the story. I was like, I would have never known what happened. And she’s like, “Yeah, so the guy shot somebody over there, ran across the street, and shot down the walkway that I was crouched down at.” So the protection from this side actually became Duck Hunt, with me crouched down. And the guy next to me is who got shot.

1:25:08 Whoa. So if I didn’t run and trust my intuition, I very well could have got super — up. So, you know, on New Year’s, it’s been nine years, and I just finally… it’s an important story. It’s not pleasant, and it’s not fun to even talk about, and I don’t do that to, like, personify, like, whatever this dirty —. But it happened, it was real. And for me, part of art is therapy, and it helped me kind of work through just the realization that it happened, that I was still okay, and that my intuition literally — saved my life.

1:25:41 ROGER: Yeah, man. I mean, it makes it all an awful lot more real, right? Makes it a lot less theory and a lot more practice.

1:25:41 COLDIE: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, and it’s the classic thing, like, you know, you look at it, and I also kind of hesitate to tell the story, because I don’t want it to change people’s perception of what the piece is. I was telling the story to my buddy Rafael, and he thought that I baked all these things into the art piece, like all the symbolism. But I absolutely did not. Like, it all worked together and it looked cool. The walkway was much like the series I’ve done… I have a theme of people walking down a path.

1:26:46 He’s like, “Do you realize that you’re like the crouched-down walkway, that you were, like, the guy was shooting on? Like, you have a walkway with people.” And then, like, the skeleton of the head. Like, even as an artist, I think that sometimes we… I don’t know if it was subconscious or what it was, but I looked at this piece differently. I’m like, whoa, how did I embed this symbolism that wasn’t even supposed to be there? So I’m now blown away looking at this damn thing.

1:27:17 So I love this piece, and, yeah, I’m glad you do too. I think that’s the thing, is we make connections. And, you know, the art is what matters, and the fact that there’s a piece of art that you like is the whole point, you know. Like, all of these things, I don’t make anything to make money. That has zero to do with it. It’s a nice bonus, but art is art and it has to be made. And, you know, I love doing this —. It’s deep as — and I love it.

1:27:50 ROGER: And to bring it full circle, to someone we talked about a little while ago, that’s Alotta Money. That’s what he always said. He wanted to create things that he would want to put on his own wall, and that would make him smile. And in his case, that was the interpretation. So I love connecting those two dots right here.

1:28:22 COLDIE: Absolutely. Yeah, but it’s 100% the exact same thing. Yeah. And to me it makes things… it’s easier to get out of your own way and take chances and keep pushing, because that’s how we evolve, whether it’s art or just life in general. It’s like, just do what you want to see for yourself. It’s almost like the golden rule, but turned back onto you. Like, do unto yourself what… well, you know.

1:28:55 It’s just, be the best you can, but don’t judge yourself. Like, it’s the same thing. When I went to LA Weekly for that interview, my portfolio kind of sucked, you know, just because I wasn’t evolved to where I was later. But I was proud at that time, and I showed it, and it got me to the next step, and I love it. And it’s funny, where I’m sitting around, I’m like, I have so many ideas that I need and want to do. I really feel like I’m a 10-year-old.

1:29:29 Like, there’s so much to cover, and it’s fun because we can. And at the same time, I’m alive, right? And especially with Alotta, it put a lot of things in perspective, where we’re not going to accomplish everything in life. We simply will not. And that’s a true case. You look at Alotta, but you know what that — did? He created to his highest potential every single time. He never dialed it in. He never took the easy path.

1:30:02 And because you don’t know when it’s going to end. So it’s exciting, because, you know, anything can happen at any point. But it’s fun to see a pathway where it’s like, I’m so excited for the future. I’m hungry and yearning, and I’m just manifesting. Who knows what’ll happen, but I want to do the coolest — I can for myself, just so, you know, when I go to bed each night, I’m like, “Yup,” you know, “you didn’t dial it in.” Like, just don’t start dialing it in.

1:30:35 ROGER: Don’t start calling it. You’re living it, man. You’re living it, and you’re walking it forward. So, we have a couple more minutes. I want a couple of these passion projects.

1:30:35 COLDIE: Okay, go, because that’s what I love. Let’s make this our lightning round. It’s gonna be totally abbreviated, all over the place. You can throw questions at me while I’m holding up —. We could get real nuts. So this one is a split-cut t-shirt, where I had two shirts printed, cut, and re-sewn.

1:31:08 I had this idea, like, 15 years ago, but never had a means or a reason to do it. And finally, after a long time, I first sold these shirts for, like, 60 bucks. But it’s funny, it hasn’t actually released yet. I pre-sold these, like, two years ago. And it’s the shirt; you get metaverse versions for your avatars; you get a print, or an edition that’s basically this design.

1:31:40 And the coolest thing about it, I did this thing with MetaFactory, is there’s, like, an RFID tag of some sort, I don’t know, or NFC, I forget what the actual chip is called. But there’s a Kong wallet in here, so you scan it and it’ll prove authenticity. But the real cool thing, that I haven’t fully baked… it’s a lot, I just kind of learned what’s baked into this thing. It’s a passive wallet.

1:32:13 So, I don’t know the whole details, but you have the private key on the other side, but I can airdrop — to the shirt. That’s cool, right? So, like, I could just say, hey, every Christmas, you know, whatever it is, something. There’s a lot of fun opportunity for that. And that’s probably maybe April, we’re gonna do a drop of those. It’s exciting. Yeah, totally stoked. It’s been years in the making. And MetaFactory is just killing it. They’ve made this dream actually a reality, you know.

1:32:46 Because there’s so many times that technology and the creative process don’t align. One of those being 3D concert photography. I was shooting 3D concert photos in 2009, and that whole time I was envisioning, “Someday I will be able to look at my pictures in full-color VR 3D. Someday,” right? And it’s now, like… no, I literally… it was probably six months ago when I was really diving in with the different apps to use, and I threw in some of my 3D concert pictures.

1:33:19 And, like, I was — crying. Like, you know, I’m sure my goggles were a — mess. But, like, it came true, right? Technology, it met the equilibrium, right? So I’m going to start doing my 3D concert pictures in a pretty cool bundle, so you can kind of view it in any type of 3D.

1:33:19 ROGER: So amazing, man. Future-proofing.

1:33:19 COLDIE: And this is a lenticular. Can you see that? So that’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers that I shot. And, I just… it’s the thing, it’s like, that’s the side passion hustle that I was doing, you know. I drove two hours each way for 15 minutes of photography, and it was all worth it. It was awesome.

1:33:53 ROGER: Now it’s all worth it. Two more things. One: Snoop Dogg.

1:33:53 COLDIE: Yes.

1:33:53 ROGER: I feel like that’s a… it was going to be a lightning round topic. So the lightning round is first thing that comes to mind, and if you want to say a little bit of an extra piece… But if I throw that at you, Snoop Dogg, what would you throw back?

1:34:25 COLDIE: Unthinkable bucket list opportunity of awesomeness.

1:34:25 ROGER: Yeah. I kept waiting during the Super Bowl halftime show, when they were doing their thing, and when Snoop Dogg was performing, I’m like, I’m looking at the back wall.

1:34:25 COLDIE: Oh, I was gonna be there.

1:34:25 ROGER: And then the last thing, to tie it all up: the Coldie method. I’d be remiss to not throw that at you.

1:34:25 COLDIE: Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, no. Another experiment, right? Back in SuperRare early days, it was just a bid-offer situation. So someone would bid, and at some point the artist would decide that was it. And it’s hard when there’s two people, and instantly it’s like you’re choosing favorites at a certain point. Like, “Oh, I choose you.” It’s like, “Well, why did you choose them?” “Well, it was just enough.” It’s like, “Well, what if the other guy wasn’t done?”

1:35:30 You know, so it was just very, very early, and I had to problem-solve on the fly just to make something out of this. So what became the Coldie method was, you know, on Twitter I’d state the reserve. You know, I said, “Hey, 1 ETH reserve,” then it goes into a 24-hour clock. And that’s nothing new, right? That’s been around. The difference was I extended a full day.

1:35:30 And the reason I did that was because, first of all, the sharks would place bids at a time where they knew the other guy was sleeping. They would try to do some shenanigans, right? And I caught on to that one. So I was like, nope, a full day. You could go to work, you could take care of your family, you can travel, you can do whatever you need, but just know that there’s 24 hours. So it gives you time also to think, like, “Do I want to bid?” You know.

1:36:01 So I did it, and it worked right away. It was like, wow, that was awesome. And from the other side, I was testing auctions and the mechanisms of bidding wars, and it was all just kind of uncharted stuff that I was just like, let’s see what happens. And for the most part, and I say most part without going into any detail, it was a huge success, you know. There’s definitely some whiny people, but that’s okay, people like to whine. But the mechanism works, and it was transparent. Once that 24 hours was over, that person wins, and I transfer the token.

1:37:06 It was all manual. Sometimes I was setting up my alarm for, like, 2:37 a.m., with my laptop next to me, or I’d wake up, check it, and then there’s another thing, you know, go back to bed. But you had to stay true to it. You had to hit it, because if you waited another four hours to accept it, someone could bid, or that guy’s pissed off. So I took it very seriously, and it became a thing. Other artists started using it.

1:37:37 And then other artists started recommending it to platforms. Like, it was something that the people wanted. I never pushed the thing. Sarah Zucker was a huge proponent of it. She — loved it, and it was so awesome. I was like, “Sarah, that’s rad.” She’s like, “Well, it works.” Yeah, and, you know, hats off.

1:37:37 ROGER: So, do you want to tell the story of how we met? Would this be a good time?

1:37:37 COLDIE: Go, if you have… okay, if you have a couple more minutes, let’s do it.

1:37:37 ROGER: Yeah, yeah, no, I do. I’ve got five more minutes. Do you want to tell it? I feel like you have to tell it from your [inaudible].

1:38:10 COLDIE: Okay, I’ll do it, I’ll do it. I did not know you at all. At all. I’d seen your name, didn’t know you. So I got this message from you, which, in so many words, was a, “Hey, by the way, we love the Coldie method and we’re gonna use it,” or “we are.” I don’t think you had started yet, but it was more of an announcement to me that you’re gonna use the Coldie method on your site. Is that correct?

1:38:10 ROGER: Yeah, yeah.

1:38:44 COLDIE: Okay. Dude, I am really such a kind person, but at the same time, there’s branding, because there’s a lot that goes into, like, basically… and we talked about this. I was like, “Dude, I love you, but there’s brand sign-off.” Basically, if Coldie method is part of Artifact, then Coldie approves of this project, right? But branding-wise, like, I’m stamped right up there next to you.

1:39:15 So it was almost like, well, this guy could have asked or something, you know, but he didn’t. But, like, no harm, no foul. But I kind of pulled the reins back a little bit. I was like, “Well, who are you? What’s the contract?” Because I’ve seen people try to do it, and it’s not even coded correctly, so then it’s not actually even the Coldie method. So we went through a series where we talked back and forth: what was fair, what was the code, you know, how did it work.

1:39:49 And we’re homies after that, it was all good. But we got to get down to brass tacks and make sure that, first of all, the method worked as intended, because other than that, it’s not the Coldie method. And it worked, and I was so impressed. I was like, “Oh —, nice, okay, this is good.” And, you know, then I got to see the fruits of the process working for other artists and the platform in general, and it was awesome to see.

1:40:21 You know, because I knew what that bidding war… I knew the mechanisms of what made the process work. And you get a couple bidders in there and it creates a crank of the wheel, and it helps the artist. It’s just market value, first of all. But it just worked, and I was so happy it keeps working. So I just honor you for, you know, taking trust and just going for it and using it. I mean, it actually means a lot. It’s really quite cool.

1:40:21 ROGER: Dude, I love the story so much. I will tell you that every time we talk about it, it’s a bit of a facepalm moment. Because, those who know me, I pride myself on considering everything, on being as respectful as I can be. And in this case, there was a reason we were going to use the Coldie method, because I’m like, Coldie’s a — legend, and, like, this is where we have to go with this. Because I was seeing the value to the method, and it fit with the ethos of Artifact.

1:40:55 And so, you know, we put out the announcement, excited, like, honoring the legend, Coldie: this is the road we’re gonna go down. And then when we were talking over DM, and you were kind of like, “Well, hey, dude, I got to know a little bit more,” and I’m like, “Oh —, I really skipped… I skipped a huge step here.” But I think now it’s kind of funny, that now we’ve been able to jam.

1:41:27 I was able to walk it all the way back and be like, okay, announcement’s off. I remember we took it down. I’m like, “No, we’re not touching this until I tell you everything. You can tell me anything you want, and then, if it makes sense to move forward, we will. And if it doesn’t, then I apologize, and it’s like this never happened,” you know.

1:41:59 COLDIE: Yeah, no, it worked out wonderfully. You know, and we got to know each other really quickly, like, how do we each show up. And any facepalm that happened was quickly reverted, and it was just homies, you know. And I think that’s what it’s all about. You know, sometimes the way people come together, you don’t know what’s gonna come out of it. And I’m so happy that that happened. You know, it worked out awesomely, and I call you a friend.

1:42:33 You know, getting to meet you in New York was definitely a highlight. I was like, holy —. And you’re taller than I thought you would be.

1:42:33 ROGER: You were taller than I thought you’d… I knew you’d be tall, but I was like, he’s taller than me, damn it.

1:42:33 COLDIE: No, no, because it’s funny, there’s a bunch of people who are, like, taller than I thought, because, not that it matters, but we’re all in cameras. You’re like, huh, who knows? And there’s a lot of towers around me. It’s like, wow, like, this — crazy —. So it was just fun to be in person. So I just thank you for, you know, facepalming, giving a little humor to this whole crazy journey. It’s wild, man. And I’m here for it. I’m so stoked.

1:43:06 ROGER: It’s an honor, man. And then, you know, today, to circle all the way back, this is your origin story. You told some amazing stories. I can’t wait to go back; this is one that I want to re-listen to in full, and just walk through it again. I feel like we have to do a follow-up at some point in the future. But thank you for spending the time, man. Thanks for being honest and transparent, and so damn self-aware that you can tell these stories. And I think, be one of those trailblazers in the NFT space. I appreciate you.

1:43:06 COLDIE: And yeah, just trying to do my best.

1:43:39 ROGER: All right, man. Take care of yourself. We’ll talk to you soon.