Skip to main content

Artists ‘Crossing Over’ to NFTs During Seattle’s Art Fair

There's Bound to be Digital Fireworks Crossing the Streams

Crossing Over is almost too on point for the upcoming July 22 show at the Seattle NFT Museum. The exhibition kicks off at the same time as the Seattle Art Fair (July 21-24). The title is less a play on words than a declaration for the digital art scene.

Crossing Over will highlight artists whose work predates NFTs, moving from the physical form into blockchain technology. Eleven well-established creators help to blaze the trail into the fine art world. This show aims to not only uplift the utility of digital art for artists, but also bring this new visual art realm to art enthusiasts.

Related Videos
An abstract work from Richard Jacobs
Richard Jacobs/Seattle NFT Museum

“We hope this exhibition helps to bridge the conversation between what is happening in Web3 and the rich history of fine art,” said Peter Hamilton, co-founder of the SNFTM.

Cubism, contemporary art, portraiture, scientific, 3D, naturalist, and sacred geometric are just a few of the digital forms the Crossing Over visitors can expect to find. It’s an expression in an entirely new dialect from well-known creative minds.

“We wanted to create an exhibition devoted to talents that are moving into the NFT space,” Hamilton said. “This show is about their stories and experiences in crossing over. By stepping into NFT sales, so many artists are experiencing newfound relationships with audiences and collectors on a global stage.”

A painting by Jake Fried
Jake Fried/Seattle NFT Museum

The show is curated in collaboration with Joana Kawahara Lino. Lino’s experience in traditional galleries and auction houses merges with her love for impactful artists finding new ways to express art with NFTs.

“In terms of curation, I wanted to showcase the incredibly high caliber of art you can now find in the NFT space. These artists have worked on their craft for years, and this is reflected (in) the outcome,” Lino said in an email.

Not only is this an innovative form for these craftspeople, it’s also a novel way of hanging a show, which for Lino, is exactly where she wants to be.

“Curation of digital art/NFTs is a rather new discipline, and developing a voice and style has been a privilege and joy I never thought I’d have the access to, and for which I am incredibly grateful,” Lino said.

Showing Seattle NFT Museum artists include Norman Harman, who combines analog and an autonomous digital painting process “to achieve a Baconian grotesqueness in a POST-COVID, consumer-driven world.”

New from MEGA DROP CORP

Title: Limo Guyhttps://t.co/14ZCYhrOw9#cryptoart #painting pic.twitter.com/OgCaNjMEWj

— Norman Harman 💎 (@NorrieHarman) July 12, 2022

Visithra Manikam, a.k.a. VISSYART, is a self-taught visual artist and photographer from Malaysia. Her modern Indian expressionist and pop art/surrealist painting art has been exhibited in L.A., New York, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, and more. Stretching her imaginative muscles, Manikam’s work evolved to iPad digital drawings and eventually digital animations.

“I started off seriously doing art as a traditional artist working with acrylic on canvas,” she said in a press release. “Being in this (NFT) space allows me to explore and push boundaries that existed in the traditional world.”

Vissyuga is the age of Ikari faces.

Vissy is my nickname while the three letters at the back have dual meaning. In Tamil/ Sanskrit – Yuga means age or a period of time.

Vissy-uga also refers to Mugam in Tamil which means faces. https://t.co/dGNey4TyzX pic.twitter.com/HJ0ELxNJhk

— Vissyarts (@vissyarts) June 5, 2022

Interestingly, Manikam finds the virtual world to be freer from expectation.

“There is more freedom and a lot of inspiration to create any kind of art without thinking (about) what is collected by a certain country,” Manikam said. “All kinds of art find acceptance here and this allows endless creativity.”

Tickets are now on sale for the Crossing Over VIP preview event from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, July 22, at the Seattle NFT Museum. Attendees can hear about work and inspiration from several exhibiting artists on display.

This promises to be a happening artistic weekend in the Emerald City, as hundreds of contemporary and modern artists will converge at Lumen Field for the aforementioned Seattle Art Fair.

Learn More

Editors' Recommendations

The 10 best Adam Sandler movies (they’re not all comedies)
From Uncut Gems to Happy Gilmore, these are the movies that have defined Adam Sandler's career to date.
best adam sandler movies ranked adamsandler

What is there left to say about Adam Sandler? The Sand-Man has been a fixture of pop culture for well over 20 years, having worked first on Saturday Night Live and then broken out in a series of farcical, wonderful comedies in the years after his departure. He's one of the biggest comedy stars on the planet, and we know that in part because he's made plenty of movies that nobody should be forced to watch twice.
For every movie that has immediately been relegated to the trash bin of history, though, Sandler has also made an indelible comedy or a surprising turn into drama. While he may have emerged looking a little bit like a one-trick pony who relies on funny voices for cheap laughs, Sandler turned out to be far more complicated than that. He is a genuinely great actor whenever he wants to be. The rest of the time, he's content to make silly movies with his best friends.

The Waterboy (1998)

Read more
Every ‘Creed’ and ‘Rocky’ movie, ranked
Where does "Creed III" fall on our list of the best "Rocky" and "Creed" movies?
Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan in Creed.

Good sports movies are fairly easy to come by, but great ones can be almost impossible to find. Over the years, the Rocky and Creed franchises have produced movies that fall into each of those categories. When they're good, the movies in this franchise are among the best fighting movies ever made. Even when they're only okay, though, they're still pretty great sports movies.

With the recent release of Creed III, it feels like the appropriate time to take stock of the entire franchise and determine which Rocky movies rise to the top and which ones sink to the bottom. A great Rocky or Creed movie can take a wide variety of  forms, but what matters most is the emotion it evokes in the viewer, and how authentic those feelings are.

Read more
The 11 best podcasts for long road trips in 2023
Make your drive better with these great podcasts for road trips

Spring is nearly here, which means it's time to start thinking about the great American road trip. Whether you're planning to venture from coast to coast or just a few towns over, you're going to want some quality content to listen to. Enter the podcast, the road trip's best friend.

This is not to say you shouldn't embrace the sounds of the road. Nor should you avoid your fellow passengers or overlook that special quiet you get when you're driving an empty road during the wee hours. But at some point along the way, you might want a little sonic pick me up. That's where the road trip podcast really comes in handy, an audio copilot that will keep your brain running while the odometer ticks away.

Read more