UPDATE: Here is our artist spotlight interview with Stephen Tompkins.
This year, Miami Art Basel was essentially cancelled due to the pandemic. Although events are being held online, there is something special about the scarcity of an in-person experience with art, especially when you get to meet the artist. The NFT art world missed out on a huge opportunity to promote the immense progress in its space this year. Because of this, we believe now is an excellent time to help fill the void left by Art Basel and to highlight some of the incredible art being created in the NFT space. Specifically a rarible collection called Stephen Tompkins by Upland.
Meet the Artist
Today we will be adding a new #NFT-ART channel to our Discord. This channel will be for discussing NFT art, trends, recent purchases, ect. Ultimately, it will be a space to discuss NFT art hosted in Upland (when that feature is released).
But before we open the channel up for discussion, we will be hosting our first ever Artist Spotlight, featuring internationally known artist Stephen Tompkins (Website Rarible Instagram Known Origin).
This will be a week-long event, during which:
- We will release an interview with artist Stephen Tompkins.
- We will be highlighting his work on socials, and Discord.
- Exclusive NFT art created by Stephen will be available for purchase in #NFT-ART.
“Daydreams and nightmares seem to inform Stephen Tompkins’ work equally. One addictively absorbing example is GummyMorph, a compendium of lugubrious shape-shifting goblins and tumescent worms that inflate, bloat, pop, reconfigure, melt and sway to a mesmerizing percussive soundtrack. Domesticated Celestial Bestiary (this animation opens with a gong as a house decants an unlikely menagerie of creatures before promptly deliquescing), is another key example of Tompkins’ associative process which playfully sutures the sublime and the ridiculous.”
— Robin Clark, PhD, MCASD (Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego)
Buying The Art + Explorer
Today we will post 3 pieces of Stephen’s work in #NFT-ART, commissioned by Upland, and 3 block explorers that were each made in the image of the correlating art piece. The art and the explorer will be offered as a pair.
Each Art NFT (produced by Stephen Tompkins) and correlating Rare Block Explorer (Created in Partnership with Stephen Tompkins) is a one of a kind collaboration. This is the first time Upland has ever produced work like this.
If you would like to own one of these unique NFT sets, you may make an offer in the #NFT-ART channel.
- Each image of the art and explorer will have several offer prices associated with it.
- Players will be able to make an offer on each art piece by putting a “100” emoji next to the offer prices listed after each image.
- The offer will be on both the explorer and the original art piece (2 NFTs).
- Example: If the highest offer price is 500k UPX, and a player has responded with “100”, then we will confirm the validity of that player’s interest, before adding higher offer prices.
- We will continue to add higher offer tiers as players raise their offers.
- Whoever has the highest offer by the end of the Artist Highlight, will be able to purchase the art at that price.
- Players will be able to make an offer for about 1 week: from the time we open the new #NFT-ART channel and post the art this afternoon until next Saturday at 1pm PT.
- When the offer period has ended, we will lock the responses in #NFT-ART, until the winners have received their new art.
Additional Details
All players making an offer on the art should be ready to purchase the necessary UPX for the transaction. Any players suspected of spamming or abusive the offer system will be kicked from the server.
The Art NFTs themselves currently live on Rarible, in Upland’s account.
Upland can either hold the NFT for the new owner (and transfer it when the Rarible is integrated with the upcoming NFT Portal), or we can transfer the NFT to your Ethereum wallet. The block explorer will be converted to a tradeable (and sellable) NFT in the future.
