When DeFi Society Studio (DSS) first launched the Mad Rabbits Riot Club generative NFT line, we knew it was only the beginning of our journey into producing NFTs. Our goal was always to utilize the team we formed and the community we built through Mad Rabbits to nurture and guide up-and-coming artists into crypto and NFTs; whether they were already established and just needed a little guidance with the crypto space, or completely undiscovered and ready to explode. Still, the question stood. Who was that first artist going to be? With the exception of the natural evolution of the MRRC ecosystem (hello, Mad Rabbits: Gang Wars and beyond), there was no real conceptual or aesthetic requisite for what our follow-up project would be. The only thing we knew was that it had to be artist-centered and wholly unique to the NFT scene.
We didn’t want to just grab a traditional physical artist, digitize their work, and make NFTs out of them. We needed an artist that wasn’t yet on the crypto-art scene, while also perfectly suited for it. Someone who not only had something fresh and provocative to say with their work, but had the arresting visuals to fully back it up. After wracking my brain over potential artists, the choice was clear. Detroit based neon artist Kate Hush was that person.
I first met Kate back when I worked as Creative Director for an arts-ed nonprofit in NYC. My boss wanted neon signs for the office (remember, this is a Manhattan nonprofit. Neon office signs aren’t that weird for a philanthropic org to have. Well, maybe they are…), so he sent me to a neon workshop in Brooklyn to learn how to bend neon. Kate wasn’t my teacher (I was just a noob doing an intro course), but she sometimes stepped in when our instructor needed extra help or had to call out; and she was often in the shop working on her own pieces during our class. It was hard not to just stand in awe of her work, even when it was just in progress.
Here was this unassailably badass neon art that felt both respectful to the aesthetic history of neon while also taking a sledgehammer to the institutionalized male dominance of the artform and rebuilding it in the image of a femme fatale. The piece she was working on at the time was a huge neon sign of a hand holding a mirror which was itself reflecting back a pair of lips with lipstick being applied to it by the subject’s other hand. It felt so new, both from a conceptual and visual level, that it remained embedded in my mind. Years later when we were trying to come up with an artist to bring into the NFT scene through DSS, I remembered that piece, and I immediately knew it was the right artistic voice to storm through the gates of the NFT art world with.
It brings me great pleasure to announce “Hotel Hush: a neon NFT drop by Kate Hush,” dropping on Nifty Gateway on June 3rd, 2022. In anticipation of the drop, Kate took the time to answer some questions I had about her work, artistic inspiration, and desire to get into NFTs. Here is that conversation in its entirety:
“How did you first get into neon bending?”
I grew up in a small New England town that didn’t have much in the way of lighting aside from street lamps and headlights, so my initial introduction to neon was through movies and television. I remember being quite taken by the imagery of colorfully lit metropolises, and even into adulthood it never left me. At some point I developed an absolute fervor for Neo-Noir films, I couldn’t get enough (still can’t), and that’s when my love of neon truly ramped up. It’s something that’s heavily featured in that particular genre, and the neon isn’t just part of the landscape or set design, it feels like a character in its own right. No scene would be the same without it, and it simply can’t be replaced by another light source and have the same allure. The way it bathed the protagonists, villains, side characters in deep chromatic light, that spoke to me; and damn did I want to be just like the bad lady in the neon glow. I find there are two camps of people when it comes to someone who has a shared love of neon and film; and I always like to say I’m a Body Heat, not a Blade Runner.
So to actually answer your question here… I was probably at the height of my obsession with all things Neo-Noir, and I happen to have a background in graphic art. I found myself creating all of these digital pieces made to look like neon. I never in a million years thought I would get my hands on the actual glass stuff. But lo and behold I was eventually hired to be the designer in a neon studio due to this particular interest I had. I was there for years and my design role eventually turned into me playing a part in every step of the fabrication process, including bending. The rest, as they say, is history.
How would you describe your work’s main aesthetic and/or overarching theme?
I love visual storytelling, particularly in cinema, and it has always had a large influence on my own artwork. I consider myself first and foremost a conceptual artist, and upon discovering the Noir genre, I found that I had an inherent zeal for the characters and stories being told. It was both fascinating and also some kind of catharsis for me to see the women in these films getting to be truly multifaceted. I loved it. They were some kind of bad, but they were also equitable in many ways as well. I was so used to seeing women in art and entertainment, and even real life, as being pared down to bad vs good. There wasn’t a whole lot of room for any in between, and they certainly weren’t the antihero as many men before them were. This clearly struck a chord in me, to see these ladies finally not portrayed as the damsel in distress, or the hanger on partner. Instead they were the likable libertine.
I remember internally pumping my fist at the end of The Last Seduction when Linda Fiorentino [SPOILER ALERT] got away with it all [SPOILER ALERT]. It always annoyed me in the original Noir films of the 40s, that more often than not, the woman “got hers” in the end. I know it had a lot to do with the morals of society back then, but still you have these incredibly intelligent characters that constructed these impossibly grand schemes, and then one little thing gets them caught in the last few minutes. Ridiculous! I consider my pieces as snapshots in neon of the women who get away with it all. There is no ambiguity here, I’d like to declare now that none of my ladies get caught for their misdeeds, so you need not worry about them.
But it’s not all cinema that informs me, there’s a hell of a lot of real life thrown in there too. My subject matter certainly goes beyond the “deliciously wicked woman” trope of the art world. It’s also absolutely my way of digesting and satirizing this viewpoint of women as singularly nasty creatures; only containing selfish and manipulative qualities. These viewpoints have definitely been popularized as of late by these particular online groups. Groups that have emerged in the past 10 years or so. I’m not here to give them any kind of recognition or call out, but let’s say they certainly are going their own way. Reading their content is like a car wreck on the freeway to me, I am a digital rubbernecker — mouth agape, equally horrified and inspired to create some kind of visual catharsis out of all the textual folderol of misplaced anger. Personally I have always found one of the best ways to deal with a fool is to reflect their nonsense right back at them, and I feel like that’s certainly a part of what I am doing with my artwork. You want to see an unhinged woman? I’ll show you the woman of your dreams.
If I tried to simplify it all… My best friend created a brilliant artwork (in neon) that animates in three separate lines — “BAD MAN”, “BAD BOY”, and “BAD GIRL”; a lot can be said about how those phrases interact with one another — what is a bad man, compared to a bad boy, compared to a bad girl? After seeing her piece it dawned on me, my art can be best described as the bad lady laughing at the bad man.
“Why did you decide to translate your work from neon to NFTs?”
Creating digital representations of neon is a bit of a homecoming for me, it’s how I started my journey into the medium and now I’m circling back to it years later. When I create my artworks digitally I’m able to illustrate visuals that just aren’t possible in glass, the rules are completely changed. It feels freeing and boundless compared to sculpting a piece in the studio, I don’t constantly have thoughts like, “can I even bend this? Do I have this glass color?” floating around in my head the entire time I’m drawing. I can achieve the same overall feel and aesthetic I love, but I’m not boxed in by the limitations of the actual medium. In glass I can make an incredible piece, on screen I can create my dream piece.
I also love the idea that digitally created artworks are finally getting their due in the fine art space. Before NFTs there was almost no avenue for digital artist’s work to hold as much weight as pieces found in a gallery — both critically and financially. Outside of creating digital work for commercial purposes and having to basically sell off your intellectual property, it felt like it was upload and give away, there was no sense of ownership or tangible value. Now there is.
“What is the origin of the concept behind Hotel Hush?”
For a long time I explored the act, the denouement, or moments of vivacity in my work. I started wondering about the in between world of the women I sculpt. How do they move about, where do they hide away? Hotel Hush is a place to take shelter. When you book your stay, you’re not within the scheme; you’re charting it, or post coital of your actions. I love the idea of not knowing what was done, or what will be done next. I pictured a place where these ladies can roam about, testing and resting. The staff turns the other way and asked no questions. It’s not in a big city or a nosey small town, it’s off a highway, nestled by nature and out of the way.
“What are your future plans for Hotel Hush and the rest of your work in the NFT space?”
I hope to stick around in the NFT space for some time to come and see how it eventually evolves and develops. As for Hotel Hush? I always say you have to wait and see. I much prefer a map slowly unfurled, with the route being revealed only piece by piece. That being said, the whole “hotel” concept opens itself to so much further exploration and narrative development. There’s definitely a natural progression to the Kate Hush NFT ecosystem; and honestly, we wouldn’t be dropping a literal Hotel key as an NFT if it didn’t open some doors down the line…
Hotel Hush drops June 3rd, 2022 on Nifty Gateway.
For further updates on drop lineup, time, mechanics, etc., follow DeFi Society Studio on Twitter at https://twitter.com/defi_society and Kate Hush on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kate and Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/katehush/
