Micah Johnson is a figurative painter and NFT artist who works in strong gestural lines and loose brushstrokes, painting dramatic portraits that mostly feature African-American children.A former Major League Baseball player, he turned to painting during his baseball careerand later created Aku, a boy in an oversized space helmetinspired by his nephew's question about whether astronauts could be Black.,
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson collaborated with fellow MLB player Matt Szczur on George Floyd Portrait, splitting the image between them. Released on Nifty Gateway, the piece sold out in under six minutes.Aku launched on Nifty Gateway in February 2021.Over the following year it expanded across multiple chapters and physical exhibitions,appearing on the cover of TIME magazine, at the NBA All-Star Game, and on Beats headphones.,In October 2021, the payments company Visa announced a partnership with Johnson to run a program supporting NFT creators. By then, Aku had sold $2 million of tokens in a 28-hour auction. Its lead character had also been optioned for film and television.
In April 2022, Johnson announced Akutars, a 15,000-piece collection continuing the Aku story, developed with Aku advisors and creative council members Pusha-T and Upscale Vandal and featuring designs from streetwear labels including Billionaire Boys Club, ICECREAM, and Paper Planes.Once launched on April 22, a bug in the smart contract let an exploiter lock $34 million worth of ETH inside the Akutars contract.,The Akutars team said the exploit “was not done out of malice”. It called the loss “our fault” and said it would refund discount-eligible pass holders and airdrop the Akutars NFTs to bidders.
In December 2022, Johnson contributed Time To Be Happy to Benzi's Time To Be Happy 00:01, a project pairing seven artists with antique time clocks converted into physical-digital artworks, presented at “Scope Art Fair” during Art Basel 2022.,Johnson described his piece as a chronological diary of his life, from birth through baseball, art, and Aku.He also wrote Aku Journey to Ibra, a book for readers ages 8 to 12 that continues the character's story.In February 2026 he took part in Butter, a no-commission art fair benefiting Black artists, when it expanded to Los Angeles during Frieze week.
