here's a sentence i never saw coming: i just got home from buenos aires, where my art was featured in an exhibition as part of the devconnect conference in argentina. (?!)

back in july, i almost missed a calendar invitation for an interview with tomo saito of the ethereum foundation. (another ?! moment.) i had applied earlier in the summer to an open call for something vaguely titled, "the devconnect ARG scholars program," that had been sent to me by a friend. i'd never heard of this program, and it took me a while to even realize that it was spearheaded by the EF itself.

i made it to the interview (barely), and a few weeks later found out i had been accepted to the infinite garden artist cohort, along with 11 other artists.

we spent the following months meeting weekly, reading finite and infinite games, building out virtual studio spaces, learning from each other and subject matter experts, workshopping, critiquing, and developing our ideas.

i'd gone into the experience expecting that i'd create a digital work, as that's the space i've felt most comfortable in as "tinyrainboot." but when all my ideas seemed to be falling apart, and everything was dissolving into chaotic confusion, i felt called to steady myself. instead of grasping at straws, what had felt right to me lately? i decided to re-center and deepen my exploration of the medium that has felt most cathartic to me this year: paper and thread.

in april 2025, i had begun a small side project: a completely analog diary and exploration into making things that "feel real." the diary has long been one of my subjects; "internet diary" was, for the longest time, what i called the entirety of my online work.

photo by tomo saito, ethereum foundation

whenever i showed this little book to someone, i was surprised by their reactions. people would, at times, break out of character. it seemed that this work was garnering more visceral responses than anything i'd ever made digitally (also perhaps, because i was usually in the room, unlike with my online audiences). i loved watching people draw their own interpretations from the often silly or sad little phrases, poems, and observations i'd stitched. so it seemed only appropriate to follow the thread, if you'll pardon my pun.

during the months that we met online as a cohort, we had a few sessions about meditation. during the same period, i travelled for one week to bhutan with edge city, a trip that was transformational for me. i found some answers to questions i didn't even know i had. a few cogs within me finally clicked into place. new questions arose, along with a hunger to answer them.

i had always been very turned off by the idea of meditation, especially because as a westerner, a lot of my exposure to it was through the guise of meditation as a "productivity hack" -- ew. i never understood the point of guided meditations, nor found them to be useful for me personally.

part of my aversion may have stemmed from my own relationship with spirituality and "god," which had mostly left the building by my late teens. the concepts instilled in me by the catholic church growing up had done me far more harm than good. it was a door i kept locked and blocked for a very long time.

photo by tomo saito, ethereum foundation

thanks to some of the wonderful people i met and a few experiences i had during that bhutan trip, plus the exposure it gave me to buddhism, it became clear to me that meditation is something well-worth pursuing. with my growing interest in the spiritual and esoteric realms, i have finally understood that meditation is a foundational practice -- and there many ways of meditating.

one could say that i already had my own meditation practice, in a way; after all, the ability to enter flow state through the act of creation has always been available to me. i just never called or thought about it as such.

energy goes where attention flows. so i finally decided to take meditation seriously.

during this period, another concept i had been playing with was "the upward spiral," an idea that found me via some of my favorite deranged instagram meme admins. perhaps coined originally by alex korb (i haven't read the book), the upward spiral is a mental health framework for, little by little, escaping the snare of depression through small steps that eventually lead to improvements in one's state of mind. Learn, Commit, Do.

to me, "spiraling upwards" can be explained in several ways. i see time as a spiral that lays loops upon itself over and over, kind of like a coil or spring. we often find ourselves in situations that might feel eerily similar to somewhere we were in the past, but we are able to approach them with new knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

the spiral is also reminiscent of a ripple, where each action we take emanates outward from a single point. we have the power to steer that center -- to decide how our spiral takes shape.

the spiral is a universal symbol, found across ancient cultures worldwide. it represents concepts from the cycles of life, time, and the spiritual journey to the idea of interconnectedness and cosmic forces. the spiral is a portal, too.

i had already played with this motif a bit within my stitched journal. so the idea came to me to make a massive spiral that would pay homage to the themes of meditation and spiraling upwards.

i knew the exhibition would take place within a bustling conference hall. so why not curate a moment of peace and self reflection among all that chaos?

i would invite the viewer to step up close. to find silence and stillness. to breathe.

you are the center.

the actual act of creating the spiral caused me to, you could say, spiral across many dimensions. i started over three times. working with paper and thread is not for the faint of heart; it's easy to mess up. and as i spiraled across dimensions, i also found myself deep, deep within flow state. the final piece took me around 25 hours, and most of that within the span of 5 days.

i definitely felt insane. and within that insanity, i found radical joy.

photo by tomo saito, ethereum foundation

concept statement from the exhibition:

“You are the center” inviters the viewer to find a moment of peace within the bustling conference hall. A quasi-hypnotic, delicately-crafted spiral of red thread rotates outward from the center of the page, representing the idea that representing the idea that what we experience in life is ripples, emanating from a single point. By consciously finding that place of stillness inside of us, that point from which all emerges, we finally understand that we are the creator. That we are capable of shaping our lived experience by choosing in which direction to throw the metaphorical pebble into the pond.
“A genius does not have a mind full of thoughts, but is the thinker of thoughts, and is the center of a field of vision…It is because I cannot see what you see that I can see at all. The discovery that you are the unrepeatable center of your own vision is simultaneous with the discovery that I am the center of my own.” (James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games, 1986)
The spiral is a meaningful symbol to work with, not only because of its appearance and what it represents, but also because of the meditative practice of its creation. A universal symbol found across ancient cultures worldwide, spirals can represent the cycles of life, the spiritual journey, interconnectedness, and cosmic forces. To work with an overt symbol such as this one is to pay tribute to thousands of years of artistic and spiritual practices.
After all, nothing new is ever created — it only changes forms.

photo by tomo saito, ethereum foundation

although my original intention had been to cover the entire paper, i decided instead to keep the spiral "unfinished" -- leaving the needle attached and hanging, to be continued in an upward motion. dangling there like it was just waiting to be picked up and continued by the viewer.

overall, i'm very happy with how everything turned out. the exhibition was beautiful and cohesive.

i'm grateful to everyone who engaged with the work -- sometimes a little bit of external validation is nice, as a treat.

it was also an honor to stand alongside so many other incredible artists:

my deepest gratitude to tomo, caroline, khrystyna, emily, and the EF for making all of this possible for us.

if you read this far, thank you. may you always find the courage to keep spiraling upwards.

xo,

tiny

Universe Calling

Listen to Universe Calling on Spotify. Song · Tara Putra · 2023

https://spotify.com

Explore

Explore