AB5D

pixelpete

The photographer on the curation board.

Peter Molick, an architectural photographer in Houston, sat on the first Art Blocks curation board and has collected the platform from its second day. His wallets hold 716 AB[500] works across 250 series, beside a collection of photography.

Collector
pixelpete (Peter Molick) · @pixelpete
Role
Art Blocks curation board member from late 2020, later adviser
Collection
pixelpete.gallery
Holdings
716 AB[500] works · 250 series · 11 wallets
abTDH
109,436,193 · · method
716
AB[500] works
250
Series
248
Minted directly
109,436,193
abTDH

Entry into blockchain and crypto art

"Before this year, my experiences with crypto have mainly been on the investing/trading side, which started around 2017," he told Art Blocks in 2021.1 Generative art was the door into collecting: "I began my journey through my involvement with generative art, which feels truly native to what NFTs offer."2 He knew the platform's founder well: "Erick is a close friend and has had a vision for what Art Blocks could be for years now."1

Unusually, he chose to collect under his own name. "I opted to be transparent about my identity early on when the stakes weren't very high," he said in 2022.3

pixelpete across the AB[500]

Art Blocks holdings

He joined the Art Blocks curatorial board in late 2020 and later became an adviser.3 His stated test is visual: "I am drawn to work that I find strong aesthetically before anything."1 The wallets show a collector of breadth rather than depth. The earliest work still held arrived on 28 November 2020, the day after launch, and 248 of the works were minted directly. Only eleven series are held ten deep or more, led by FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT (16), Gen 3 (14), AlgoBeats (13) and Bent, Color Study and Automatism (12 each).

The curated canon is present in small numbers: Fidenza #550 and #559, Ringers #63, #88 and #713, Archetype #367 and #439, Meridian #332 and #408, three Subscapes, The Eternal Pump #37 and seven Chromie Squiggles.

Associated holdings

His other collection is photography. His first serious photographic purchase was Reuben Wu's "Theory of Forms," followed by work from Alejandro Cartagena's "Suburbia Mexicana"; he generally buys one work per artist.3 "I try to collect work that resonates with my sensibilities more than anything," he has said.3 He wrote an introduction to NFTs for photographers in 2022,2 and publishes selections from the collection at pixelpete.gallery.

Notes

  1. Druid, "Meet the Curation Board: Peter Molick," The Link, Art Blocks, May 2021. medium.com/the-link-art-blocks ↩ ↩ ↩
  2. Peter Molick, "NFTs: An Introduction and Crash Course for Photographers," 5 January 2022. petermolick.com ↩ ↩
  3. Ellyn Kail, "Inside An NFT Collector's Eclectic Photo Gallery," Feature Shoot, 28 March 2022. featureshoot.com ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩