New Jersey-based Artist Trish Gianakis has revealed her ongoing work in ‘hybrid’ art: physical artworks that are backed by a digital asset.
Gianakis believes that this approach will allow traditional art buyers to engage with the NFT marketplace, enlarging the audience that can benefit from digital art.
The St Peter’s University Professor and Bronxnet TV artisan in residence said: “for most people, artwork needs to be tangible. We live in a physical world and physical assets are more ‘real’ to a lot of people. But digital art can protect artists, and enlarge the market - and individual artists’ followings - through virtual events.”
Combining the best of both worlds - physical and virtual - is key to Gianakis’s approach: “to create the most perceived value for a buyer, and the best chance of career success for an emerging or established artist, a hybrid product is best”.
The digital asset which backs the physical art in Gianakis’s hybrid work allows artists to track their art, leave a lasting legacy, and can also be used for the transparent transfer of royalties in the event of, for example, the art work being transferred to a collector.
NFT art created by Gianakis and others also comes with a certificate of authenticity, meaning that the chances of art fraud are almost zero. This certification is ‘hardwired’ into the digital asset and is essentially unfakeable, according to NFT experts.
“Art fraud is worth $6 billion per year” continues Gianakis. The perceived risk of fraud may be higher with emerging artists - they need as much, if not more, protection than anyone else in the industry”.
Gianakis feels that this protection is important because the Government has become hostile to public funding of the arts, meaning that artists are often forced to fund their own careers in the early stages. Traditionally, this would be achieved through patronage networks, but those - according to Gianakis and other artists - are not accessible to all.
“NFTs can democratize the art market,” says Gianakis. “And if they are attached to a physical product, traditional art buyers are comfortable with it because they are getting something they can put on their living room wall - as well as their digital wallet”.
The hybrid physical-digital approach of the collection is informed by Gianakis’s former work in digital marketing (running campaigns for major sports brands and recording artists), where digital technologies were important, but were still supplemented by physical channels.
‘Our lives are hybrid - neither purely digital or physical. Our art should be the same” concludes Gianakis, who makes her art available on major NFT exchanges which include KnownOrigin, OpenSea, TheFineArtLedger and Artsy.net.
About Trish Gianakis
Trish Gianakis is a long-established immersive artist, who has been a full-time artist since 2016. Previously, she founded and ran a digital marketing agency for 20 plus years, specializing in the entertainment industry. After being diagnosed with cancer 2015, she pursued her calling in the arts full-time.
She has taught at Fashion Institute of Technology, and is Professor of Fine Arts at Saint Peter’s University. She is also one of the Artists in Residence sponsored by Creatives Rebuild New York, a first time employment program for artists in the State of New York.
She is one of few artists to have their work displayed on Times Square Jumbotrons, and has received several awards for her art which includes a Rocky Mountain Emmy Award for Best On-Air Graphics.
Contact
TrishGianakis.com
