Welp, here it is, an audio interview with the elusive CFW! He is an Indian artist with experience in photography & video making, and known in the NFT space for his surreal 3D work. Dive into our discussion where I ramble a bunch and he shares his personal experiences, influences in his work, and some thoughts about art and technology.
Full disclosure: I am friends with CFW, and am also on the team he has assembled for Stacyverse projects. Through this relationship, I have had the opportunity to write science fiction, build our website, admin and setup security for our Discord server, do copywriting, sort media, and even co-host public discussions on the web with our community manager Unkfunk. All of that being said, I’ve learned a lot alongside CFW, and he has been a big part of my journey into building projects on the blockchain.
Here’s my first piece I collected from CFW, before we had a working relationship:
CFW stands for Chapters from Within, and in talking with him, it becomes quickly apparent that his work really is like a series of chapters, all coming from inside his mind. He has created a universe, known as the Stacyverse, that has a narrative full of positivity, exploding with color. This is the same ‘verse that he has created the following collections for:
Stacy Pills series I
Stacy Pills series II
Pillheads Originals
Pillheads Generative
Alongside these collections, CFW has a tradition of giving, and there are multiple airdrops and free claims that occur regularly, where holders of his art are rewarded with even more dope art! Additionally, he is an established artist with sold out 1/1s and limited editions. Be sure to check out his unique work on Foundation!
Personally, I think CFW’s humility is inspirational. For an artist to be so proficient in his craft, and to maintain a lack of ego is refreshing. I often talk about how art can be a reflection into an artist’s identity, and I think that while we are experiencing a persona that CFW presents publicly, his true self is apparent in his creations.
As an example of this, I want to mention Pillheads Generative. Most multi-K collectible projects in the NFT space are often rugs, and creators are heavily focused on optimizing quantitative output over quality. And even with projects that do focus on quality, most generated art is a series of randomized PNG layers. It takes a lot of work for an artist to create layers that will not look like absolute horseshit when they are randomized.
With pH Gen, CFW did randomize PNG layers. He actually shipped the project out to a render farm and each one of these 6655 unique characters was rendered out individually. No PNGs were involved in the making of this collection. Feel free to dive into the collection and check out how insanely detailed each one is. Here’s my custom one that was made for me, which includes some environmental elements that are straight out of the stories I write for Stacy Pills.
Around 30 minutes into the podcast, CFW brings up Boxhead, and touches on the notion that she is living her art. I think this is so important, especially in an age where so much is commodified. It is very challenging for an artist to stay true to their vision when everything demands to be turned into a product and/or brand. I think CFW has found a very happy medium between the two: the art is the brand.
There were quite a few honorable mentions in our discussion, and I want to tag some of them, because they are all a part of our journey. First off though, here is some art from Pichi & Avo, the street/mural artists that CFW likes very much. I can see how it influences some of his art - especially his 1/1s.
Honorable mentions!
Be sure to check them out, and stay tuned for more about/with some of these folks.
Next up, I am sharing my interview with Boxhead! Aaaah! Check out her work here to start getting an idea of why I’m so excited:
See you soon, and thanks for your support!
Transmission 2 - CFW