‘We’re Creating Our Own Thing’: Art Blocks Founder Erick Calderon on the State of Generative Art

Despite enduringly dismal conditions in the NFT market, some art-focused projects leveraging blockchain technology have managed to stay steady—or even, in a few cases, grow—over the last year and a half. One of those few outliers is Art Blocks, the digital art platform and gallery that uses NFTs to mint and distribute generative art works to collectors around the world. 

After launching its own NFT marketplace in March—a move intended to protect the increasingly threatened practice of enforcing creator royalties, a fee between 2.5% and 10% sent back to an NFT’s creator in secondary market sales—Art Blocks has expanded its slate of curated, generative digital art projects to include live, globe-spanning in-person minting events and digital art projects featuring physical components. 

In late September, Art Blocks hosted its third annual in-person gathering—the Marfa Weekend—in Marfa, Texas, home of the collective’s sole physical gallery. Hundreds of Art Blocks collectors, artists, and community members flocked to the tiny desert town for a weekend spent discussing the future of generative art, showcasing cutting-edge projects, and celebrating the organization’s remarkable resilience.

There, Art Blocks founder and CEO Erick Calderon (aka Snowfro) sat down with Sander Lutz, lead culture reporter at Decrypt’s SCENE, to discuss the company’s work and Calderon’s perspective on its recent accomplishments.