Legendary 3D artist and Voice NFT Residency curator Chad Knight joined us at our NFT.NYC Kickoff event at DorDor Gallery to talk about getting into digital art and share some advice. 

Chad: That’s an excellent question because  it’s impossible to keep up with everything that’s happening right now in this space. But, a lot of it, I think, is noise. My background is skateboarding and what was really special about that to me, was that I entered it in a time when there were like 200 rogue skateboarders. Now there’s thousands. And there was no money to be made, but we did it because we loved it so much, and there was just so much passion in it. And then, that eventually, again, that became an opportunity to have a career. And I feel, like, right now we’re in a very similar space where you have digital artists who have been doing this for a really long time, just out of passion, for the love of it. And, as well as these, is on the other side of it, which is the crypto-folks who, then, just, they’re so passionate about it too, because they believe in what it is and what it stands for and what it represents.

So the merging of these two cultures, finally, is something really special right now, but it is deeply embedded in authenticity and passion for the space.

Chad: Very early on in this whole NFT extravaganza, I realized that I had a responsibility to help bring visibility to some of the artists that I knew were really authentic and have been in this space for a while and who deserved to have a seat at the table. So, I was super-honored and excited about this whole project and platform and working with Voice on being able to bring visibility to some of these artists who have had success, but maybe are still just a little under-recognized.

One is Nicole Ruggiero, who is an absolutely incredible artist, and she’s working on her own kind of collectibles project. We’re waiting for the technology to kind of get to the place where we want to release these. The other one is Parrottism, who is working on…I was going to say self-portrait, but it’s just parrots.

The other interesting and exciting component of this is that they are all encouraged to collaborate with somebody new. So this is going to fractalize over time and they’re going to be able to have their own people that they work with on another season and so on, and so on. So, we continue to elevate individuals through this family. 

Another artist that I’m working with is Shan Vincent de Paul, who we found through an incredible art piece he had done that was an homage to Jay-Z. And it was a sequence kind of evolving through all the different covers of portraits that he has had over time. So we approached him for this, not knowing that he’s one of the most incredible rappers out there.

He’s a Tamil rapper and he just did the soundtrack for a huge movie. And it’s one of the most incredible albums I’ve ever heard. So, he’s working on a project with myself and a couple other artists, that’s all centered around that album. 

I am super-excited about the team that I’ve been able to bring on and really honored that I’ve been able to have the opportunity to bring visibility to these artists that I think are absolutely incredible, but maybe still a little bit under-recognized.

Legendary 3D artist and Voice NFT Residency curator Chad Knight joined us at our NFT.NYC Kickoff event at DorDor Gallery to talk about getting into digital art and share some advice. 

Chad: That’s an excellent question because  it’s impossible to keep up with everything that’s happening right now in this space. But, a lot of it, I think, is noise. My background is skateboarding and what was really special about that to me, was that I entered it in a time when there were like 200 rogue skateboarders. Now there’s thousands. And there was no money to be made, but we did it because we loved it so much, and there was just so much passion in it. And then, that eventually, again, that became an opportunity to have a career. And I feel, like, right now we’re in a very similar space where you have digital artists who have been doing this for a really long time, just out of passion, for the love of it. And, as well as these, is on the other side of it, which is the crypto-folks who, then, just, they’re so passionate about it too, because they believe in what it is and what it stands for and what it represents.

So the merging of these two cultures, finally, is something really special right now, but it is deeply embedded in authenticity and passion for the space.

Chad: Very early on in this whole NFT extravaganza, I realized that I had a responsibility to help bring visibility to some of the artists that I knew were really authentic and have been in this space for a while and who deserved to have a seat at the table. So, I was super-honored and excited about this whole project and platform and working with Voice on being able to bring visibility to some of these artists who have had success, but maybe are still just a little under-recognized.

One is Nicole Ruggiero, who is an absolutely incredible artist, and she’s working on her own kind of collectibles project. We’re waiting for the technology to kind of get to the place where we want to release these. The other one is Parrottism, who is working on…I was going to say self-portrait, but it’s just parrots.

The other interesting and exciting component of this is that they are all encouraged to collaborate with somebody new. So this is going to fractalize over time and they’re going to be able to have their own people that they work with on another season and so on, and so on. So, we continue to elevate individuals through this family. 

Another artist that I’m working with is Shan Vincent de Paul, who we found through an incredible art piece he had done that was an homage to Jay-Z. And it was a sequence kind of evolving through all the different covers of portraits that he has had over time. So we approached him for this, not knowing that he’s one of the most incredible rappers out there.

He’s a Tamil rapper and he just did the soundtrack for a huge movie. And it’s one of the most incredible albums I’ve ever heard. So, he’s working on a project with myself and a couple other artists, that’s all centered around that album. 

I am super-excited about the team that I’ve been able to bring on and really honored that I’ve been able to have the opportunity to bring visibility to these artists that I think are absolutely incredible, but maybe still a little bit under-recognized.