Time to Be Happy | Jack Butcher
Jack Butcher is an artist, designer and entrepreneur. His minimalist, monochromatic aesthetic is a restraint applied across his work to extract clarity from complex human concepts.
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What inspired you to become an artist? I had no idea art was ever going to be an option for me until well into my late 20s. Wasn't exposed to it as a kid, parents and all of their parents before them had military or industrial jobs. When I was 16, I spent a week of work experience with my cousin who worked in a design studio and spent a week designing a skateboard brand (using the mac attached, which felt like I learned magic). After that week, I was determined to figure out a way to do creative work for the rest of my life. At first that was graphic design – I spent 10 years in New York working at agency businesses. In 2017 I decided to start my own business, and landed my dream client (Ferrari) but still wasn't happy with the work I was doing. In 2019 I started a project called Visualize Value, to start doing work that was completely under my control.
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What was the first artwork you sold? My Chisel piece references one of humanity's greatest polymaths — Leonardo da Vinci, a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. His timeless maxim "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" encapsulates everything I strive for in my work.
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What was the most meaningful piece you created? "From Nations to Nodes" Representing the paradigm shift in which we live. A time where rules are being rewritten, institutions replaced, and art is being democratized for both artists and collectors.
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Share your experience creating the Clock. Time is a theme that runs through much of my work — the opportunity to work with a clock that not only represents the record and passage of time, but more specifically “clocking in and out” from a place of work, exploring the idea of having your time “kept” by someone or something. A journey most of us go through as we try to reach creative independence.
The clock metaphor, paired with the fact this is a part physical piece, inspired more thought on what it means to be an artist in the age of the internet. Working with a “permanent” physical object, and how that contrasts with the blockchain as a mechanism for provenance. Time is something we have reached consensus on, as is the Ethereum ledger that records the history of our work as digitally native artists.
This process stretched me to think more about how to bring my work into the physical world, and how time is an idea that binds us all, but interpreted completely uniquely by the individual.
Clock includes this NFT and 90 minutes of visual video art featuring 50 artists captured by Benzi.