artplusbrad

Artist

artplusbrad · artplusbrad.com ↗

Based

Born in Raytown, Missouri. Lives and works near Kansas City, Kansas.

Practice

Abstract digital artist and programmer who integrates photography, creative coding, and animation to explore beauty through color, shape, and hard edge minimalist forms inspired by color field painting.

Raster

raster.art/artist/brad-damico ↗

Now

Maintains a teaching practice near Kansas City alongside ongoing development of new generative bodies of work.

In the set

Ode to Roy ↗ · 906 editions
Ode to Untitled ↗ · 240 editions
Undercover ↗ · 91 editions
Mellifera ↗ · 58 editions

Links

Full bibliography ↗

Brad Damico grew up in Raytown, Missouri, and currently lives and teaches near Kansas City, Kansas. His path to generative art began with photography and evolved through programming studies that included COBOL and later the Processing language. Early experiments with disc design in 2005 led to patterned works on canvas and a sustained engagement with digital manipulation of color and line. He entered the blockchain art field after encountering discussions of how distributed ledgers could secure provenance for digital works, prompting publication on early platforms including Rare Art Labs, SuperRare, Known Origin, and MakersPlace. ¹⁸⁹

The artist favors minimalist compositions built from blocky hard edges and vibrant color fields. He has noted the difficulty of sustaining interest within such constraints while pursuing precisely those qualities. This sensibility carries into his generative projects, where code introduces controlled variation across editions while preserving an underlying commitment to clarity and optical presence. Early physical exhibitions of printed digital works gave way to on chain releases that foreground the algorithm itself as the site of artistic decision making. ¹¹²

artplusbrad joined Art Blocks with a series of projects that exemplify the platform's capacity for large scale yet coherent generative systems. Four of these collections form the core of his AB[500] presence. Each deploys custom code to generate unique outputs from defined parameter spaces, with edition counts reflecting the scope of exploration the artist deemed appropriate for the given system. The works reward sustained viewing across multiple tokens, revealing both the consistency of the underlying logic and the breadth of its expressive range.

Ode to Roy

Ode to Roy translates the visual language of Roy Lichtenstein into a generative framework. The system incorporates Ben Day dots, halftone patterns, angled stripes, and solid color patches as modular elements whose scale, density, density, orientation, and chromatic relationships vary with each mint. Released on Art Blocks on May 4, 2021, the collection comprises 906 editions. ²¹¹ The algorithm treats these pop art signatures as a vocabulary rather than fixed motifs, allowing the code to recombine them into compositions that range from dense optical fields to spare graphic statements.

The project demonstrates how historical reference can be activated through procedural means. Rather than reproducing specific Lichtenstein canvases, the system generates new instances that retain the source vocabulary while submitting it to algorithmic permutation. Collectors and viewers encounter both the familiarity of the referenced aesthetic and the surprise of its endless reconfiguration. The ten renders reproduced here illustrate the spectrum of outcomes the system produces, from tight dot clusters and bold diagonal divisions to layered juxtapositions of texture and hue.

The scale of 906 editions positions Ode to Roy among the more expansive Art Blocks projects of its period. This breadth allows the collection to function simultaneously as an archive of variations and as a body of work in which individual tokens gain additional resonance through comparison with their siblings. The generative process ensures that no two editions are identical while maintaining the project's overall coherence of voice.

Live on Art Blocks: ode-to-roy-by-artplusbrad ↗

Ode to Untitled

Ode to Untitled, released September 19, 2022, comprises 240 editions. ³ The project marks a turn toward pure abstraction in which the artist explores the core concerns that have long animated his practice: color, shape, and texture. Without figurative anchor or explicit homage, the system generates fields and forms whose optical behavior emerges from the interaction of programmed parameters. The single render reproduced here exemplifies the project's characteristic balance of structured geometry and chromatic incident.

The reduced edition count relative to Ode to Roy reflects a tighter parameter space and a correspondingly focused inquiry. Each output nevertheless retains the capacity to surprise through unexpected alignments of edge, hue, and surface quality. The work continues the artist's interest in minimalist hard edge aesthetics while demonstrating how generative systems can sustain invention within self imposed limits.

Live on Art Blocks: ode-to-untitled-by-artplusbrad ↗

Undercover and Mellifera

Undercover, released February 1, 2022, contains 91 editions. ⁴ The project deploys systems of line, layer, and occlusion to produce compositions that suggest depth and partial revelation. Attribute ranges such as line count contribute to the structural variety across the edition. The render included here displays the project's capacity for both dense linear networks and more open, interrupted fields.

Mellifera, released March 6, 2023, comprises 58 editions. ⁵¹⁰ The collection takes the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, as thematic point of departure. The generative system translates aspects of organic geometry, pattern, and social structure into abstract visual terms while remaining within the artist's established vocabulary of color and form. The included render illustrates the project's distinctive synthesis of natural reference and algorithmic abstraction.

Together these two later projects demonstrate the artist's continued refinement of his generative language. Smaller edition sizes allow for more concentrated exploration of specific formal or thematic concerns. Both works extend the dialogue between control and contingency that defines artplusbrad's contribution to the Art Blocks ecosystem.

Live on Art Blocks: undercover-by-artplusbrad ↗

Live on Art Blocks: mellifera-by-artplusbrad ↗

Practice, Context, and Contribution

artplusbrad's trajectory reflects a broader movement of artists who arrived at generative practice through photography and software rather than through traditional studio training alone. The integration of these disciplines yields works whose surfaces carry both the precision of code and the optical sensitivity of lens based seeing. Early participation in virtual exhibitions such as Pure Form: Geometric Abstraction in Blockchain Art placed his output in dialogue with peers exploring similar intersections of geometry and digital materiality. ⁶

The four Art Blocks collections examined here constitute a significant portion of the artist's on chain production to date. They share a commitment to legible systems that nevertheless generate substantial visual diversity. The artist's profile on Raster.art and other archival platforms documents the continuity between pre blockchain digital works and the later generative projects, underscoring a practice that has consistently prioritized clarity of form over spectacle. ⁷¹³

Within the AB[500] framework these works exemplify the range of scales and approaches that have defined Art Blocks since its inception. From the expansive 906 edition Ode to Roy to the more intimate 58 edition Mellifera, artplusbrad demonstrates how a single artistic intelligence can sustain multiple generative logics while maintaining a recognizable voice. The collections reward both the casual viewer and the dedicated collector who assembles multiple tokens to trace the system's full expressive capacity.

Bibliography

The references cited in this essay are listed below. For the complete bibliography see the artplusbrad links page ↗.