“Patchwork Saguaros” In Retrospect
It has been roughly a month and a half since I first introduced my second Art Blocks Factory piece, Patchwork Saguaros. If you haven’t read the initial introduction for the piece, I encourage you to check it out below before continuing on with the retrospective discussion here.
In addition to giving an update on the philanthropic impact of this project, I wanted to take the opportunity to look back at the mints that we saw in Patchwork Saguaros and discuss the different features we saw (or didn’t) in the 72 mainnet pieces.
Philanthropic Impact
Since its initial release, the impact of this drop has continued beyond the joy alone that I hope the pieces give to the collectors who have minted and purchased them. Between the funds from the charity auction for mint #0, and the 51% of proceeds from the 72 mints, I was able to donate $24,000 to the Nancy Rockland-Miller Scholarship fund (more on this below) held by the The Kent State University Foundation.
This donation was matched by a $10,000 donation by my employer, resulting in a total of $34,000 going to the trust. This will allow the Nancy Rockland-Miller Scholarship fund to exist as an endowed fund in perpetuity, supporting the creative ambitions of performers for years to come in honor of Nancy’s life. This project completed minting just days after what would have been Nancy’s 63rd birthday and I am immeasurably proud to have been able to do this with the support of the Art Blocks community.
Mint #0
As discussed in the introduction to this project, for Patchwork Saguaros I decided to auction off the mint #0 (before it was minted) rather than keeping this mint for myself as Art Blocks artists often customarily do.
The auction was won by an anonymous bidder for 1.25 ETH, for which they received the right to mint #0 as well as the “coordinate blueprint” for this project–my initial artist sketch that acted as a reference while writing the code that powers Patchwork Saguaros. While these two pieces now exist independently, I hope they will stay together over time as they share a unique history.
When it came to minting a piece for myself, I minted alongside everyone else and was happy to get mint #4, which I had the joy of getting printed to be displayed in the Kent State University dance department, alongside a plaque that will recognize recipients of the Nancy Rockland-Miller Scholarship now that it will exist for years to come.
Feature Breakdown
Palettes, colors, and palettes
With a smaller edition of 72 mints, I tried to be mindful of keeping the rarity of some of the more “glitchy” outputs scarce, allowing for good changes of “clean” outputs that would allow collectors to build palette-sets across Stipple Sunsets and Patchwork Saguaros if desired.
To make sure this was possible, I kept around some of my favorite palettes from Stipple Sunsets, while adding new color palettes to keep things interesting. In total there were 9 unique palettes (excluding the randomized palette combinations), of which 3 can be found across both projects (Preserves, Fallen Leaves, and Sunny Day).
Each of these palettes had an equal a priori likelihood of being selected for any given mint, but at a small sample size of 72 the theoretical vs. observed results are quite different and we see some palettes like “Preserves” being quite rare when compared to others like “Purple Heart”. Preserves is one of my personal palette favorites and one that I had to be sure to collect a set of.
While on the topic of color, I have to give a shout out to the fantastic Rev Dan Catt who is a fellow Art Blocks Factory artist and who gave me the great honor of including my Fallen Leaves palette in his 70s Pop Series Two project. I’m a big admirer of Dan’s work and a collector of his pieces digital and physical, so its really special for me to get to own a piece of his that has a touch of my own creativity captured in it.
Another palette worth noting, which was a new addition for Patchwork Saguaros, is “Lenny”. This palette came to me in a fleeting bout of synesthesia while listening to Ghetto Lenny’s Love Songs by SAINt JHN and had to be named accordingly.
In addition to the 9 standard palettes for Patchwork Saguaros, there were two randomized color features: 1) a color blending effect, where two distinct palettes are chosen and interwoven across the different quilting squares, and 2) “Palette Roulette”, where a new palette is chosen for each square along the quilt.
As I spend more time experimenting with this style, I find myself being delighted with the surprises that come with some of these more chaotic and glitchy outputs–especially when viewed in contrast with their cleaner counterparts–and am excited to continue to combine these effects and new ones in my future works.
Other features
In addition to variations in the selection and arrangement of color, there are 3 features that each piece will have:
1) Perspective–is the piece facing East or West?
2) Moon–is it full or a crescent?
3) Quilting size–how many quilt patches are there in the piece? Is it a 2x2 grid, a 5x5, or a 100x100?
Of these three features, the perspective and the style of the moon are more subtle but give additional variation across the collection. Within the variation in quilting sizes though, the results can feel pretty dramatically different. Intentionally most pieces have a quilting size of 4x4 or 5x5, making the 2x2 pieces or the 100x100 (of which only 1 exists) stand out in comparison.
Some things end up forgotten
Similar to the “Forgotten Sun” feature in Stipple Sunsets, Patchwork Saguaros included a special feature called “Forgotten Saguaro” in which the ink was forgotten for the metaphorical “screens” of the saguaro and moon. Like in Stipple Sunsets, this feature was uncommon, occurring only 2 / 72 = 2.8% of the time (which was less than its theoretical odds of occurrence of ~5.5%).
While “Forgotten Sun” was rare, there was an even rarer rare that was so rare we didn’t see it on mainnet: “Forgotten Horizon”. Like its cousin, Forgotten Horizon is the result of forgetting some of the ink, but the background instead of the foreground.
While this feature had a chance of 1 / 54 = 1.8% for any given mint, in aggregate for the small sample size of 72 we didn’t get to see it at all in any of the minted pieces. This is somewhat to be expected, as the chances of not seeing this effect in 72 independent statistical events is roughly 30%.
I had hoped we would see this effect once out of the total of 72 pieces, and my hopes were only lifted higher when I saw this happen twice on the Rinkeby test net, but in the end Forgotten Horizon will have to come another day.
Coming Soon™
As I’ve discussed online in the Art Blocks Discord and on After Dinner Mints, I plan to continue to experiment through my generative work in this style that is inspired by printmaking and quilting, leaning into small edition sizes that allow me to focus on different landscapes or subjects and emphasize different styles (more chaos or more calmness).
For my third Art Blocks Factory release, I plan to lean in to some of the more glitchy outputs of this style which I personally really enjoy. While I don’t have many firm details to announce just yet, I’ve included a little preview here of a test ouput (a work in progress) from my third project, which will be coming to an Art Blocks Factory near you soon™.
