What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
Ana María Caballero.
Which company / institution are you representing?
I'm a cofounder of theVERSEverse.
What is your professional background and career?
Multiple award-winning artist and poet.
What lead you to the blockchain?
When I read about NFTs, I immediately knew I wanted to create a poetry gallery, where I could sell my own poems, but also those of my poet friends. This gallery eventually became theVERSEverse.com. Meanwhile, I fell deeply in love with the crypto art ecosystem. It’s such a radiantly alive place to be.
For years I wanted to be a poet-artist, unbound by the page. By exploring new dimensions via which to share my verse, I felt certain I could make my words mean and probe and traverse and expand and touch and grab you in more urgent ways. So, I leapt into the echoing well of art borne of the web.
The artist takes risks because the need to communicate our experience of the world is so clamant that we cannot bear to sit still. The artist, via the personal, taps into the universal, placing private visions at the service of connection.
Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
My poems are heavily influenced by the works of poets such as T.S. Eliot, Louise Gluck, Lucille Clifton & Sharon Olds—authors with unmistakable poetic voices.
URL to one of your recent artworks?
URL to one of your artworks you love most?
Which is your medium?
Digital + written poetry.
Which tools do you use to create your blockchainart?
Word processor, adobe illustrator, photoshop, premier pro, pen, paper, stable diffusion, p5js.
By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
I tokenize via NFT platforms, such as SuperRare, Makersplace. I also launched a collection with renowned London gallery Gazelli Art House.
Further info you'd like to provide re the creation process?
My poetry is rooted in the deeply intimate details of my day. Our desires, regrets, quests for purpose are inseparable from the logistics of living. We rip envelopes, answer emails, towel children, boil eggs, all while pondering the ultimate meaning of our existence. I tend to be very direct in my writing.
When we over embellish what we’re feeling, it’s often because we’re afraid of feeling it. I believe that only brutally honest and personal writing can be relatable–much less universal. Language doesn’t need to adorn itself to be powerful or beautiful. Much of my work explores how biology determines heteronormative societal rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood—particularly notions that package female sacrifice as virtue.
My poems are moments of observation, but also resistance. I like to employ rhyme, which, in conversational texts, becomes a marked departure from our normal speech patterns and adds intention, play, and subversion to a text. Sometimes, I feel like a conceptual artist, drafting poems borne of ideas, of messages I want to communicate, putting my tools at the service of concept. Other times I feel like a landscape painter, making suggestions based on what I see.
On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
SuperRare, KnownOrigin, Gazelli.io, fxhash and OBJKT.
Whom would you recommend to be added to B.A.D's people portraits?
Connie Bakshi.
Anything else you want the community to know? Or comments towards us at B.A.D?
What excites me about the possibilities of digital art is that poetry and art can now converse on equal, virtual ground. Digital poems can be experienced in the same way digital art is experienced, via the devices that connect us to the world and its webs. I believe this will represent a revolutionary shift in the way poetry engages and seduces new audiences, particularly if this poem incorporates new media such as visuals, music, and voice.
Spoken-word poetry by virtue of its immersive nature can reach out from beyond the screen, acting as a powerful bridge between our visceral and digital selves. When I applied to my MFA in Poetry, I asked if I could do a joint MFA in Visual Art. The university didn’t even know where to direct my request. Eventually, I desisted.
In many ways, I feel like I was waiting for the artistic opportunities afforded by Web3 to arrive. My hope is that Web3’s ethos of decentralization will translate into a welcomeness to artforms, such as poetry, that were not typically displayed, appreciated, or transacted as art in the past.
What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field? (artworks, services, dapps, projects, podcasts, etc.)
I'm an artist and a poet at the forefront of literary NFT's and web3 publishing. I'm also a cofounder of theVERSEverse.
We are always delighted to connect with Ana María. A gifted poet and wonderful human being, B.A.D. believes our interview with her will be an invaluable resource to verse-makers for years to come. Thank you, Ana! ☻