B4C artist profiles — BurgerPics
The art of pushing yourself.
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Anon, I have a habit. I’m not sure if its a bad one, or a good one, but I tend to accept workloads without recognizing the effort that is required to accomplish the task. So when Chiknwhalegod asked me to write these profiles for #bokforcoq of course I agreed. And then I lamented. The truth is I’ve only written for my own selfish pursuits. In the past it was the access that a press pass brought for me as a music journalist, but in more recent years it has been to challenge myself, whether it be working within the confines of a particular subject or industry, or savagely trying to cram my ruminations into the 255 character limit of Twitter.
But there is another reason I enjoy writing; a genuine desire to get to the root of something, to understand it, and share that elucidation with others. We stand at the forefront of one of the most exciting aspects that human culture ever conjures up, the genesis of a new medium, and the explosion of talent that becomes drawn to it like a moth to the flame.
This weeks profile, BurgerPics, did not set out to become an artist, in fact, like many of my favorite artists, he is genuinely remiss to even refer to himself as an artist now. And it is apparent from our brief chat that his motivations in fact do lie elsewhere, in each of the 7 collections BurgerPics has released thus far; there are two paradigms, a visual aspect for the collector and the technical prowess for himself required to accomplish it. Each creation becomes a boon for BurgerPics creative arsenal born from burden, and forged in the unyielding eye of the beholder.
When discussing his Potato Dogs Pixels collection, the first thing BurgerPics told me other than how exhausting making 50 animated pixel art NFT’s from scratch, was how well he functions from a challenge. “I’ve had to learn to let go, to let the process reveal itself. A lot of work gets scrapped, until I find something that resonates, and then I will iterate that until I have feel I’ve exhausted it.”
“I use this as a chance to learn”
BurgerPics first collection, Good Meltmen was drawn by hand years before he was introduced to AVAX through a friend who red-coined him from a discord server for Wall Street plays.
Along with not referring to himself as an artist, BurgerPics never trained to be an artist. Born a Texan but hailing for many years now from Los Angeles, BurgerPics went to school for, and makes his living now as a editor for film and television. Thats not to say he didn’t spend those academic years also creating and developing his art and unique style
“I was always focused on the negative aspects of art, for me it was something I couldn’t do”
When BurgerPics started investing on AVAX in 2021 there weren’t C-chain NFT’s. The idea to digitize his earlier college work and NFTize it on the X-chain was as much a technical challenge, as one of creative expression. “Its amazing now the tools that the marketplaces have now to help artists get their work out there,” BurgerPics tells me as we chat one afternoon over discord. “There is so much enthusiasm on AVAX chain,” he continues, “and so little snobbery”
“I always love big swings, an ambitious failure is a lot more interesting than a safe success”
This weeks challenge for #BokForCoq has the entrant putting their own creative vision into a silhouette from BurgerPics self-titled collection, his only one which will grow in size (5 of the other 6 are complete, and VERY low numbers) The winner will receive the NFT that inspired the entire competition. “I’d like to see the people putting themselves into what they create,” BurgerPics says about what he is looking for in the entrants he retweets and considers for winning the competition, “It’s one of those things, you can’t describe it until you see it, when someone manages to slip in a bit of their own identity into their creations”
One thing that is apparent however, is that anyone that has been inspired to create from one of BurgerPics creations will certainly bring a sense of accomplishment to the artist that he probably could of never imagined would come from delving into the investment opportunities that web3 and the blockchain would bring to him.
Its these kind of individuals that form a new decentralized art scene only possible in the world of anonymously equal opportunity. When BurgerPics creates art he not only challenges his own conventions, but the conventional art snob that sits in all of our subconscious, and as he challenges himself, he challenges all of us to prove to ourselves and others that just like the blockchain itself, art is for everyone.
BurgerPics LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/BurgerPics
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PicsBurger
JoePegs collection: https://joepegs.com/collections/burger-pics
