Everyone from the MLB, video game companies and celebrities are hitching their carts to the non-fungible token, or NFT, caravan. One Boulder County art nonprofit, ArtSticks, is looking at the realm of NFTs to expand the reach of local artists and secure new sources of fundraising.
ArtSticks, co-founded by Cassie Clussman and James Clark, operates a trio of sticker vending machines in Boulder County; two on Pearl Street at Trident Bookstore and Illegal Pete’s, with another at Longmont’s Firehouse Art Center. The stickers, now on the eighth series since 2018, are designed by Colorado artists.
With ArtSticks, Clark and Clussman aim to put high-quality, low-cost art in the hands of the community. Each sticker costs only a dollar, distributed randomly from the vending machines. The nonprofit also sells stickers by series and with a virtual sticker machine on their website, ArtSticks.net, sending them through the mail for those looking for other methods to acquire their favorite stickers.
Like many smaller nonprofits, ArtSticks is an all-volunteer operation. The stickers themselves are printed and donated by Longmont-based StickerGiant. Funds go to supporting artists, maintaining the machines and other operating costs, and neither Clark nor Clussman take a paycheck for their work.
The seventh and eighth series focus on the theme “Art as Resistance,” a purposefully broad category that encourages artists to interrogate social commentaries, environmental concerns and any other subject matter in the PG territory to keep the stickers family friendly. But that sense of resistance and disruption for the accessibility of art is now being directed at the world of NFTs and fundraising.
“The purpose of what we’re trying to do is not to generate wealth for individuals. We believe the NFT space and whatever form it’s going to take in the future will be built on what it is today,” Clark says. “It will be a continuous evolution of the NFT marketplace and now is a good time to get into it, to learn, experiment, and even fail but also have some success.”
Clark and ArtSticks aren’t trying to get wealthy through NFTs, he explains. Though the relatively few people who are exploring the world of NFTs and other forms of crypto-economics may enter into the field with designs on building out an investment portfolio, ArtSticks’ motivations are geared toward getting in on the ground floor of this new phenomenon.
“It’s the idea and joy of joining a community, participating in something new and unique and learning about it,” Clark says.
When something is non-fungible, it essentially means it’s unique—truly one of a kind—and can’t be interchanged with something else. Fungible, on the other hand, means something is one of many. A dollar is fungible, worth the same amount no matter the serial number. The “Mona Lisa” is non-fungible, worth a different amount than any other painting, even others by da Vinci.
NFTs are like works of art in their uniqueness. They are created on a blockchain—a digital public ledger that exists across a network of computers—by a distinctive alphanumeric tag called a hash. Blockchains are capable of tracking every transaction, whether it’s cryptocurrency or an NFT. An NFT works like a certificate of authenticity and ownership for whatever the NFT is tied to, whether that’s video game tokens, tickets or rare works of art, which can then be bought and sold. The NFT can contain information on the creator, when it was made, and the price of every transaction related to that hash.
The sense of ownership is murky. Buying an NFT isn’t necessarily like walking into the Louvre and buying the “Mona Lisa,” more like owning the documents of authenticity for the famous painting. While the majority of NFTs sold also include an experience of some sort—music videos, digital art, etc.—the NFT itself is effectively a receipt that can be held or traded.
Tim Rohde, tech analyst and CEO of Boulder crypto-company Blockchain Guru, explains that, like many collectibles, NFTs are as valuable to collectors as anything else with what he calls “lasting value.”
“I’m concerned when I see an NFT sell for $90,000 and it’s not associated with something we already apply lasting value ideas to,” Rohde says. “I’d be totally comfortable if I saw an NFT of the ‘Mona Lisa’ officially sanctioned by the Louvre. If that sells for a million dollars, that’s fine, I get it.”
Established works of art aside, Rohde’s concern is when big sale prices get attached to digital art from relative unknowns. Not that the artist should benefit, he clarifies, but that there’s no way to gauge how long that high value will hold as a trading item. Buying, selling and even producing NFTs is a high-risk gamble. Rohde compares NFTs and cryptocurrency to gambling at a casino or trading stocks, only with a higher cost of entry and less regulation.
“The thing to understand about NFTs is that it is a game. You’re playing a game. And in some cases those NFTs will have lasting value, but we don’t know if they all will,” he says.
Rohde has been helping Clark navigate the world of NFTs, he explains, though he doesn’t want to call it consulting. Still, he sees benefit in how NFTs can help local art.
“Some of the things that make sense for maintaining lasting value are present with ArtSticks. They are an organization, they put out a physical thing. People consume it, they collect it,” he explains. “It’s associated with emergent and established artists.”
The tangible aspect of ArtSticks—stickers from local artists, already accessible and collectible—is what gives Rohde confidence that the nonprofit’s artistic ideology could play well in the market.
“Those people make stuff in the real world that sells, so there is structure under the NFT in that sense,” Rhode says. “It is a cultural phenomenon with real artifacts, in the real world that people pay for, made by people who will continue to make these things and maybe become famous.”
Clark is looking at the Rarible platform for ArtSticks’ NFT sets, both for its use of multiple forms of blockchain, but also because of how Rarible uses “proof of stake.” Blockchain validates transactions through two different means—proof of work and proof of stake.
While the technical differences between the two are borderline arcane, proof of work costs significantly more in technological and energy requirements, leading to a higher buying cost for things like NFTs in that blockchain. Proof of stake is owned by several people, instead of just one, leading to more efficient systems and a distributed cost structure for NFT hosting.
Clark is still working out the details, whether to release digital versions linked to previous sticker series or bring in artists to generate new designs entirely. The important thing for him is that artists continue to see financial return for their creations.
“The beautiful part of it is that every time they are bought and sold, a percentage of that future purchase would get back to the artist in perpetuity,” Clark says.
Before ArtSticks moves forward with any NFT creation or auction, Clark is concerned with how artists get paid; whether artists would be required to start their own crypto-wallets to see a pay out, or if payment would be handled by more traditional means.
Because the majority of NFT series on the market are tied to one artist or entity, ArtSticks’ collective approach to art introduces some minor complications. Another issue ties back to Rohde’s notions of lasting value and what experiences and rights come with the purchase of an NFT. Clark wants ArtSticks supporters to find value in the NFT without impinging on the creative rights of the artist themselves. As such, any ArtSticks NFT wouldn’t include distribution rights for the artwork.
“We have the task of educating our own artists about NFTs and there is a concern from them about what it means when their art goes out into the world,” Clark says. “We want to make sure we’re protecting the artists as much as possible.”
Even with challenges and limitations, Clark is excited for the possibilities for where art, nonprofits and commerce can meet. Creating an NFT that offers value for a buyer while still protecting the artist is a puzzle Clark is sure he’ll solve, particularly because he isn’t looking for a $90K sticker price.
“Our goal isn’t to create some form of astronomical revenue stream, our goal is to continue to get exposure and help get artists exposure in a new community and know, ‘I’m being helped,’” Clark says.
Dreaming big, Clark hopes that NFTs can provide even more future opportunities for the organization to reinvest in local arts. For ArtSticks itself, NFTs could provide an alternate revenue stream to fund the organization, buy more sticker machines and even start offering scholarships within the community. Clark doesn’t want to get rich off ArtSticks, just learn a new method of reinvesting in art itself. If NFT auctions can provide that method, who’s to say it isn’t worth exploring?
Clark sees a future where lower-cost NFT options can create new forms of memorabilia, like concert tickets or posters, managed by the creatives themselves. It’s not just about lasting value to the world at large, he says, but what has value to the person who bought it, which includes records of an experience.
“I think artists have the best opportunity to really drive adoption of the NFTs,” he says.
On the consumer end, Rohde encourages people engaging in NFT auctions to go in with the right frame of mind, supporting arts organizations and artists, and not necessarily look at the potential ArtSticks NFTs as a form of long-term investment.
“I think that NFTs are an exciting thing for nonprofits in the art world,” Rohde says. “It’s fun to play in new markets, it’s an exciting thing. I think that as long as people keep their heads about what they’re doing—supporting the arts—they can have a lot of fun with NFT transactions at auctions like with ArtSticks.”
