1/1 with Sloika: Conversations with Artists

Today marks our 50th episode of the Sloika Darkroom podcast! Thanks to everyone who’s been part of our journey! We chat with the creative team behind the Nexus collaboration including macro artist Bruno Militelli, and Remx team members, Mike Montgomery and Filippo Di Trapani. Nexus is packed full of firsts. Bruno brings us a unique macro view of bubbles never before seen and offers collectors the...

In this Monday episode, Jordan Banks is our featured guest. He is a photographer, educator, founding editor of JRNY Magazine, and the 14th photographer to mint on Sloika! It’s been almost a year since our last Twitter Space chat, so we had a lot to catch up on. Jordan remembers taking pictures in his mind as a kid, always looking to find that perspective that was uniquely his own. So, it was only...

In this Wednesday episode, we celebrate the exhibition of Sloika NFTs, “Provenance in Focus – Photography in Web3” on display at the Mecenate Fine Art gallery in Rome, Italy from Dec 6 - 10, 2022. In advance of the in-person vernissage (ie: grand opening), we held our own virtual gallery talk with MFA owner, Matteo Scarnera and several of the guest curators and photographers. We hear many excellen...

In this Monday episode, Steve Bennett, who says he was ‘born in a tray of a developer’ in his Dad’s darkroom joins us to talk about collecting NFTs from artists and creating his own photography. Steve considers himself a lens-based artist and says his photography falls into two camps: the seen world and the re-imagined world. Early on in his NFT journey, Steve received advice from an early innovat...

In this Wednesday episode, we meet artist Dasha Pears who joins us from Helsinki to talk about the path she traversed to arrive at her style of psychorealism in her photographic works. She recalls that growing up, she had the privilege of having any book she desired due to her mother owning a chain of bookstores. Much better than a library, where you have to return the books! She chose books about...

In this Monday episode, Ev Tchebotarev shares some Sloika features that are not actually product features but are benefitting NFT photographers nonetheless – such as this podcast for example, and the latest version upgrade to the Sloika custom contract that is already the best in the space with regard to NFT provenance, storage, and minting efficiency. We chat about Ev’s second edition release on...

In this Monday episode we talk with Sloika co-founder/CEO, Ev Tchebotarev, about nerdy topics we should be aware of in this crypto web3 NFT art space. After unpacking the events that unfolded with the FTX collapse – plus recalling a few other crypto failures like Luna and Celsius – we discuss how the state of the economy is more correlated to the NFT art market that one would think. That’s not the...

In this Wednesday episode, we get to know Zach Lipp an active NFT collector and architecture photographer who creates beautiful cityscapes in Los Angeles and Chicago using his killer drone skills. When asked how he enhances the emotion in an image, he explained that he never changes the architecture or city, but, “The sky is mine!”  Zach was the first collector on Sloika who collected a 1 ETH...

In this Monday episode, Sarah Lyndsay joins us as our special guest. She is known for photographing herself wearing a beautiful yellow dress in creative self-portraits shot in amazing landscapes around the world. She’s also famous for being a generous source of inspiration and education within the web3 space, especially to people who are making the transition from a web2 presence on social media....

In this Wednesday episode, we get to know Sunny Sangwan, an NFT collector who is drawn to art, stories, the beauty of feathers – especially peacock feathers –  and has been a collector at heart since his youth. Sunny has deep compassion for people and believes dialogue has prevented wars, settled conflicts, fed the hungry, averted misery, and been a catalyst for growth for ages. He has collec...

In this Wednesday episode, we chat with HChip and learn how he uses his leadership and coaching skills to help others achieve their loftiest goals. It started when he was an executive at Murdoch News Corporation and discovered he could coach people to advance their careers by outperforming their competition. Now he does the same for artists in the NFT space by weaponizing them with business knowle...

In part 1 of this Wednesday episode, we talk with Tim Salikhov, editor of the weekly Substack newsletter, “ Photography on Blockchain ” about why he sees a massive runway for growth in the photography NFT space. Analyzing sales and trends in the space is something he does for fun to fulfill his own curiosity and publishing his newsletter is a personal project he enjoys. He is working to onboard co...

In this Monday episode, we chat with MetaJungle co-founder, Emma, a.k.a NiftyMetaGirl who is a superstar community-builder, web3 educator, and NFT collector. Since it is Halloween, we have to find out her favorite candy and potential costume options. After a debate about black liquorice – love it or hate it – we dive into Emma’s entrepreneurial journey that brought her to the bull market of late 2...

We gathered this Wednesday to celebrate “Reflections,” the second drop from the Concurrence Collective. Their first drop earlier this year, “Frozen Planet” was the first-ever collective drop on Sloika. For this round, they’ve added 6 new photographers through an open call and blind curation process bringing them up to 30 members. We hear the stories behind the images including Chad Torkelson’s per...

In this Monday episode, we chat with Nik Kalyani, a serial entrepreneur, early crypto miner, CryptoKitties owner and generally an early NFT adopter, and founder of NftyDreams DAO . Nik would call himself more of a catalyst than a collector, but that being said, he has collected 25 photo NFTs from Sloika-verified photographers including Jassi Oberai, Haesum Ali, Kevin Paul Zilaboo, Ebrahim Elmi, Bo...

In this Wednesday episode, we learn about the gamified NFT 1/1 art ecosystem, Foreverlands, from the founder, Paulius Uza. He is a collector, investor, and engineer who has a big vision for how artists can thrive in web3. He also holds a claim to fame for being the first Lithuanian to mint an NFT. To date, Foreverlands has collected 27 NFTs from photographers on Sloika including Eric Paré & Ki...

In this Monday episode, we are joined by collector, AlphaTrilogy, for a chat about how he got started collecting fine art in real life and how this transformed into collecting fine art NFTs and photography NFTs in particular. We check in on his recent acquisitions which include 35 pieces (at current count) by Sebastião Salgado, several pieces shot in North Korea by Stéphan Gladieu, and Helios by S...

In this Wednesday episode, Pam Voth and Subodh Shetty bring special guest, collector, and photographer, Paschalis Serafeim, to the stage to chat about the NFTs he collects and his editions of “That Night” that sold out on Sloika in just over 1 day. We learn what not to do when DM-ing collectors about your work and that Paschalis is a skilled basketball player and trainer, something no one in the c...

In this Monday episode, we chat with Mike Schmidt about the innovative way he is releasing his legacy project, “Lost In Transit,” a decade of moments in the art of observing human beings commuting on The Staten Island Ferry. Mike shares the exact wording he used to DM collectors about his work and emphasizes the importance of laying the groundwork with collectors pre-mint. Mike is an active suppor...

In this Wednesday episode, we focus on the artistry of drone photography with two special guests. Armand Sarlangue was awarded Photographer of the Year 2022 by the Siena Drone Photo Awards for his image, Big Bang, which is a top-down shot of an active volcano fissure in Iceland. Mickey Falzone’s image of the Taj Mahal on a misty morning was commended in the Urban drone photography category. We hea...

In this Monday episode, host Pam Voth interviews prolific art and photo NFT collector, Leslie Spurlock. We learn that she has collected 1,704 NFTs to date (but that number is likely to change by the time you read this). She loves to be an artist’s first collector and finds many of the pieces she buys through her activity on Twitter. She believes we should all do what we can to make the world a bet...

In this Friday episode, host Ev Tchebotarev helps to unpack the week’s events in the web3 space. We witnessed Tyler Hobbs launching QQL generative art project and banning X2Y2 marketplace from participation. Azuki was briefly delisted by OpenSea (by the end of the episode it was resolved), showing powers that platforms have over projects and teams. Polly shared the timeline of early Ethereum proje...

Wednesdays are Drop Party days in the Sloika Darkroom. In today’s episode, photographers around the world tell us about their 1/1 series and editions. We learn about the Asiatic lions of Sasan Gir National Park, historic volcano eruptions in Hawai’i, macro smartphone photography of spiders, infrared sci-fi documentary-style photography, a new light painting method that creates a luminous fabric ef...

In this Monday episode, we ask photographers to tell us about a shot that defined their style. Along the way, we find inspiration from painters like Gustav Klimt and fine works of literature. We learn how the Fujifilm system is well-suited for color palettes found in Japan and Hong Kong, why shooting the active volcano of Stromboli doesn’t require a telephoto lens, how one artist is spreading insp...

In this Friday episode, host Ev Tchebotarev helps to unpack the week’s events in the web3 space such as the Wintermute $160M hack. We also dive into why "your own smart contract” might not actually be your own. Several photographers shared their responses to “what is most difficult for you in web3.” Our conversation with speakers on stage covered the importance of building connections within the c...