Formed Beauty

While NFT Twitter is ablaze with pared back text on black backgrounds, there's artists creating beauty right in front of our tweets... if we simply search a little deeper for it. Today we look at the work of WGMeets.eth, Guido and Richie toa Mills.

MintFace Artist Feature - wgmeets.eth

Dominican-American multidisciplinary artist & NFT collector.

WGMeets is a Dominican-American artist that explores his inner thoughts, stories and happenings in society with Abstract Expressionism. Using his traditional art and professional design background, he builds his pieces with color and emotion using exploratory mediums.

My favourite work is State of the Union available on the SuperRare marketplace.

The artwork description says '6 million ways to grow, choose one.' It is a subtle nod to the phrase 'six million ways to die' by Cutty Ranks, a Jamaican dancehall musician who's birth name is Philip Thomas.

I love that WGMeets has chosen the positive 'ways to grow' ...AND then let the fractals choose the form his art will take.

Using fractals, motion, photography, type and more to shape his art. The official WGMeets collection houses original abstract fractal art by WGMeets. While the art is available on OpenSea....the artworks were minted with Cargo. Cargo helps artists get their art across multiple chains including Ethereum, xDai, and Polygon. Anyway...back to WGMeets fractal art.

WUW-Laze exudes that glowing foreign planet vibe, and for those who are looking to add a 2020 mint to their art portfolio, the WUW-Laze 1 of 1 edition was minted on Dec 3 2020.

The description for the WUW-Laze fractal says 'standing alone in the vastness of the universe has its benefits, the pool is always free and I have time now. Never shy away from discovery and new experiences be it solo or with them.'

"I like to find the flaws and errors in structure to join together and form a thought. It's something I'm fascinated by, it drives me and serves as a form of meditation. The same way I deconstruct forms, is the same way I clear my head and explore thoughts at the current time." says WGMeets.eth.

How cool is it that during a time where travel isn't easy, we all get to experience work from an artist that's based in Dominican Republic.

MintFace Sale Feature - Guido Di Salle

It's a long story. I make iconic imagery of people, places and things. renowned photographer + artist.

Guido Di Salle, or 'Guido' as his NFT Twitter friends know him as, caused a splash when the Poolside photograph sold 2 days ago in Thursday 3rd September at 2:35am for 33 eth.

What much of NFT Twitter might now have realised, is the connection of Guido to photography, stretches back to 1982, when he first picked up a camera. Here's what his website bio says:

In 1982 I picked up a camera for the first time. 33 years would pass before I picked up a camera again with any intent on capturing beauty. After many years of creating beautiful hair at the highest level in the tv, fashion and hair industry, my focus shifted to creating art in the form of digital, photography, painting and collage work. 
My art is the product of one simple rule: make iconic imagery of cool people, places and things. 

Now let's do the math. 1982 + 33 = 2015 was the year Guide picked up the camera capturing the beauty he saw through a lens. From guidotakespictures.com you'll start to gain an appreciation for what's been keeping him busy the last six-ish years.

Guido's 31,000 Instagram fans have been enjoying the femme fatales on their feeds for some time... yet crypto Twitter acted like Guido was new.

If there's one thing we know about NFT's, is that it's worth doing your research into the artists joining every day. Some are a BIG deal in normie world. Guido is one of those since joining on Foundation in March 2021.

My favourite four photographs from Guido's SuperRare collection in order...

#1 Warhol Would Be Jealous
#2 Rated R
#3 Luxury Undone
#4 Poolside

All are of course sold now as is his earlier photographs minted as NFT's including Nightcall, Point Of No Return and Zero Stress.

Guido's latest 1/1 photograph listing on the SuperRare marketplace aims to set a new sales high of 50 eth.

...and if there's one thing artists should take from Guido's approach, it is that confidence is sexy.

MintFace Artwork Feature - ŌMUTU moonrise at dawn

Solo dad, Photographer/Videographer, DJ

New Zealand is the name given to a pair of islands in the South Pacific almost 200 years ago...yet it's genesis (original) name is Aotearoa. I say this, because today's artwork feature by Richie Toa Mills celebrates Te Reo (Māori language) in its title with Ōmutu.

Richie describes the deeper cultural aspects that might not be immediately obvious to a non-Aotearoan in his genesis artwork ŌMUTU.

"In my culture we use the sun, moon and stars to tell what time of year it is. The sun tells us the season, the stars tell us the month and the moon tells us the day.

In NFT land, we often talk about days feeling like weeks because so much is going on. I feel that Richie's work may be speaking on more than just the cultural level. He continues.

"The ŌMUTU moon phase is the 'knowing' of the closure of the good days. The previous moon phases of Tangaroa, Otane and Orongonui are lush and productive then comes ŌMUTU to signal the last of those days before Mutuwhenua and Whiro (New Moon) which is the begininng of a new month but a very unproductive and superstitious time."

Richie belongs to Ngati Whakaue iwi, a tribe that settled on Rotorua's western shores originally, in the North Island of Aotearoa. Richie now lives in the South Island in a region known as Canterbury.

You can pick up his more recent astronomy photographs on OpenSea.

My favourite artwork from the Astro One series is #12 where the infinite of the cosmos has a young boy superimposed over the top. I'm guessing that boy 'might' just be Richie's son.

If night photography is your thing, or you're the kind of person that looks for potential future art mooning, we've seen this kind of creative brilliance before in the work of Kaleb Johnston. This time, you get to take part and collect some creative brilliance with a deep cultural history meaningful to the indigenous people of Aotearoa, New Zealand.

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If this article has made you curious about getting started with digital art, we also run the Digital Artist Economy workshop helping artists create their first digital art through a three week programme. Share it with an artist you'd like to see on an NFT marketplace.

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