Lifestyle/Art

Published on April 30th, 2021 | by Dr. Jerry Doby

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Jerry Garcia’s Original Digital Artwork “Gift” Unveiled on SuperRare

Artistic pioneer Jerry Garcia, best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist of the Grateful Dead, was one of the first musicians from his era to create digital art. Garcia’s family members have curated a rare artwork that will be presented as an NFT (Non-fungible token) on SuperRare, an online platform that facilitates the collection and trading of unique, single-edition digital artwork commonly known as “cryptoart.” The digital piece titled “Gift” (c. 1990) has been selected for release on May 5, 2021 in honor of the 56th anniversary of the first time the band played together, then as The Warlocks, at Magoo’s Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park, CA in 1965.

The multitalented Garcia, who considered himself “an artist who played music,” began creating visual art at an early age and studied formally at the San Francisco Art Institute. The mediums Garcia chose were as varied as his talents and ranged from oils and watercolor to ink and digital works. The virtuoso’s fine art has been on display in exhibits that have traveled throughout the United States and the world. He began creating digital art as early as the late 1980s. In 2014, several of Garcia’s fine art pieces were presented and later donated to the “Art in Pop” museum exhibition at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain Le Magasin in Grenoble, France.

The first Garcia digital piece, “Gift,” will be available on SuperRare, which operates as a peer-to-peer platform for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) built on Ethereum, a popular cryptocurrency. These NFTs are units of data stored on a blockchain that certifies a digital asset, and for digital artwork they ensure that the work is unique and that only one person can own the original digital piece. Garcia’s “Gift,” which is an authentic piece of art, will be “tokenized as a digital work of cryptoart” that can be owned, viewed, and traded. “Gift” will be the first of 5 works available for auction on SuperRare throughout the month of May 2021.

An important component of the art release engages the carbon offset tools made available by Aerial, an ecologically driven platform whose mission is focused on mitigating the carbon footprint generated by blockchain technology. This project supports Aerial’s forest conservation activities, which have been verified by the American Carbon Registry and Climate Action Reserve.

Additionally, a charitable element of this project will support the preservation of the planet’s precious coral reefs, a cause Garcia championed during his lifetime. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Garcia and his family frequently visited the Hawaiian Islands, where he developed a love for scuba diving among the coral reefs, often referred to as “rainforests of the sea.”

For more information, please visit the SuperRare website.

Featured Image: Wikipedia



About the Author

Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.


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