There are currently thirteen series that have curated status, which is designated through the purple diamond icon:
ADHD, Profound Misunderstandings
Archie Morley, Fragmented Expressions
BOOGLE, BOOGLE GEN 1
Celestial Body, Braille
Douglas, Hoop World Vol. 1
Highway, Dust
iamlaurael, The Lurkers
Jim Roll, Veiled Olympia
John Lê, The First Collection
LIGHTS, Lights of Solana Beach
Oxycon, Nude
Peanug, Fragments
Rupture, Watching the World Burn
ADHD creates layered abstract painting through a hybrid process of physical and digital. Profound Misunderstandings is about forms of communication – digital, handwritten, face to face, over the phone – and finding beauty in misunderstandings. The artist scans in a variety of analog source material including his physical artwork and personal mail as well as digital correspondence. He then paints many layers digitally, even deconstructing sections to create a variety of textures. Highly detailed, these paintings invite close looking.
In Fragmented Expressions, Archie Morley creates emotion through the use of color and distortion in abstract painting. Archie begins with a physical painting, layering acrylic paint with palette knives and pours to create a raw texture. He then scans the painting and continues to manipulate, enhance, and essentially repaint the image digitally. He introduces glitched elements into what was previously paint. The finished pieces are a beautiful mix of the digital and the physical.
BOOGLE GEN 1 by BOOGLE is credited with establishing 1/1 PFP art on Solana. Instead of generative mints of PFPs, BOOGLE GEN 1 is created and minted by one artist. The pixelated quality recalls early digital art, and only one hundred with varying attributes will ever exist.
Celestial Body’s Braille series brilliantly combines poetry and braille to make beautifully complex, layered images. Intensely profound, this series explores the human condition. She uses braille to add visibility to specific, traditionally unseen concepts.
Hoop World Vol. 1 has become one of the most iconic photography series on Solana. Douglas McCurdy created images of basketball hoops in surreal locations around the world. Although these images seem photoshopped, the artist used an actual basketball hoop to construct these photographs.
Highway utilizes black & white film photography and digital painting with accompanying text to create Dust, a narrative series about humanity in a futuristic, dystopian world. The beam of light and otherworldly glow shows the viewer that we are no longer in our contemporary existence. Although digital, these works have an inherent physicality and depth through the artist’s use of mixed media and texture. Through this surreal environment, Highway sheds light on the human experience.
With The Lurkers, iamlaurael has created an entire world with distinct, swirling black lines and unmodulated colors. Consisting of digital illustration and animation, this narrative explores dark spirits following kids with naughty thoughts. When the kids act on those thoughts, the Lurkers snatch the kids, taking them to the underworld where they feed off their darkness. Once the series is complete, the artist will create a book of the artwork and incorporate text to truly encapsulate this story. She will send a book to each of the current holders of the pieces.
Veiled Olympia by Jim Roll is a series of double exposure film negatives that are imbued with a mystical quality. The film is developed through an alternative process which, by chance, incorporates otherworldly color and texture into the works.
The First Collection, which is the first series John Lê minted on-chain, consists of 26 comic book style illustrations. Each piece focuses on a different character who invites the viewer into their epic worlds. This foundational series is entwined with the emergence of 1/1 art on Solana.
Lights of Solana Beach by LIGHTS is the first major photography series on Solana. With this series, LIGHTS photographed Solana Beach in southern California, where Solana was founded, and then enhanced the images through texture, color, and shapes to create a uniquely blockchain aesthetic. The block and dot textures pull the viewer into the image, enveloping and welcoming them to the beauty and vibrance of Solana Beach.
Oxxycon’s Nude is a series of photographs of a woman’s naked body pressed against a diaphanous screen. Devoid of color, each image focuses on a different part of her body. She is relaxed, confident, and in control of her body.
Peanug digitally draws the Fragments series by hand, creating highly detailed compositions. The titles and color choices are inspired by the armor trim in RuneScape, a massive multiplayer online game. This style allows the viewer to question if it is long-form generative art or hand-drawn.
Rupture’s Watching the World Burn began as one large, intensely detailed drawing that was split into 20 separate NFTs. It was hand drawn with black ink on Japanese washi paper. Although the drawing emerged spontaneously and was not preplanned, it was heavily influenced by the artist’s time in Mexico. In the lineage of visionary art, Rupture is self-taught, although the addition of the digital is truly unique. The original drawing remains locked, so this series will only ever fully exist as NFTs. Faces and figures emerge out of the overall patterning, a comment on the flaws of human nature.