https://benhaley.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Ive-been-spinning-a-lot-of-plates..png

I've only worked one job in my life. It was as a copywriter at a dingy little firm in North Shields. To be fair to the place, the pay was nice, but the overwork and trauma from working there was not work it at all.

This, my dear friend, was a blip on my self-employment career. Well, perhaps career is a horrible word for it. I think I prefer to call it a menagerie.

See, I've been self-employed since the age of 18. Literally, the day of my birthday was the day I started! I remember my A-level politics teacher detesting my constant detachment from actually learning, but at the same time being distracted is almost my calling card.

If someone noticed me keeping focus, they would assume I had been replaced by an alien.

"I've been spinning a lot of plates." is an ongoing work series which, rather aptly, focuses on spinning plates. What has made this a fulfilling project for me, is that these plates are decorated autonomously.

I have to paint things! Such is the duty and tedium of a physical artist. So, if I swap out a fancy painting palette for a not-so-fancy paper plate, I have something that proves that I have worked on my art at the end of it. It's not just washed down the drain, like the paint on the brushes or in the cup.

This, to me, is a tremendous feeling. Most of my pieces are a multi-day affair, with sculpting and baking happening the day before. By having art magically generate itself whilst I'm working, it lessens the feeling of wasting one's time between working experiences. After all, you can tell I've put in the work with one of these plates. And, thanks to the blockchain, that 'proof of work' (har-de-har) now exists forever!

I've found that NFT Showroom (@nftshowroom) was the obvious platform of choice for this. With ultra-cheap tokenisation fees, it makes it easy and affordable to make a continuous art project. Likewise, it makes it feasible to make the art cheaper to buy. To celebrate this, I have ceremoniously priced each plate for one hour's worth of work under the UK minimum wage.

Another part of this project I particularly enjoy is that it's an abstraction of my thought process when it comes to painting. What colours did I need to mix? What order did I mix them in? What project did I paint using this plate? Well, I've deliberately divorced the plates from the work, so I'll leave these questions unanswered.

I would like to take a moment to shout out the first three buyers of pieces from this project:

WizardX (@WizardX) is one of the finest artist/collectors in the space. He has an eye for work that's iterative, new, and is hosted on platforms away from ETH. It only makes sense why he picked up the plate called "First", which is not only the first plate I painted but is also the first piece I've minted on NFT Showroom in general.

You know and love Julia (@juliakponsford). Well, at least I do. She's ultra caring, uber supportive, and is genuine without fault. Her own brand of macabre yet beautiful art matches her collection- so of course she purchased Grip!

Annie (@poly_annie) is one of a kind. I've been enjoying her playful, colourful, and often sexual style since I was introduced to her work! It was no surprise to me that she picked up the plate affectionately titled "Lovers".

Last but not least, Blake (@blakestorieart) is someone I've helping get onto this platform. After I got them onto @nftshowroom, they decided to pick up "Dust", "Moon", and "Wave". Thank you so much!

Thank you for all of my early purchases so far. With the current price of 100 HIVE, I hope you'll join them in finding a plate that appeals to you. You can find the full collection in my NFT Showroom Gallery.

This post exists across the known blogosphere, where it can be found on Hive, Cent, and Ben's Personal Blog. Please consider supporting this post in multiple places if you have the time and inclination!

This post is decentralised by being made available on Hive dapps, Ethereum dapps, and my personal website. Find my personal blog at: https://benhaley.co.uk/ive-been-spinning-a-lot-of-plates/