harvmcm: Artist Spotlight

harvmcm's illustrations are flavored with emotion, vibrant colors, and a mixture of geometric shapes. With a fast growing audience, harvmcm's human geometric abstractions have captured the fascination of all who lay their eyes on them.

Even though harvmcm's "recipe" of human geometric abstractions have garnered the attention of many, he's continuing to experiment with his own style.

The layout of a work produced by harvmcm offers a relatable 'title' but leaves the audience a wide room for interpretation and conjecture of how the characters are reacting to that particular feeling.

🖼 view harvmcm's art in the zonted genesis exhibition: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=E@310E,588N,1U

How did you get into crypto (NFT) art?

I fell into crypto art by accident really. I saw artists like FEWOCiOUS and Etiene Crauss starting up at the time and I researched it a little further—both online and speaking to them both. I just thought I'd give it a shot because there was nothing to lose.

Fortunately, I got accepted to SuperRare and now Makersplace too. Crypto art is one of the main factors that has allowed me to quit my job and pursue art part time, I’m extremely grateful to all the collectors, artists and friends who have supported or collected my work so far.

A lot of folks are shooting for acceptance into SuperRare & MakersPlace. Do you have any advice for them?

My main advice would to be to make sure to apply with your best pieces and ones that'll catch the eye of whoever goes over them.

Looks like your audience and fan base has grown very quickly in the last year. Any particular reason why you think that’s happened? Does the stresses of having a larger audience influence your ability to work in a positive or negative way?

Yeah, it’s crazy how fast it’s all happening. I started my account in February, with the help of my friend @gambocean who showed me art twitter and gave me the push I needed to give it a try. To go from 0 followers in February to where I am now is insane, really can’t get my head around it.

Personally, I don’t think the audience size changes how I work. It did sway me negatively at one point early on but now I’m at the stage where I’m just creating what I want, and I’m just lucky people seem to enjoy it! It does inspire me to improve though, the more artists I see online and interact with the more I want to get better, so it really is a positive.

In what ways do you think the audience size swayed you negatively? For example, were you more hesitant to put out work for people to judge? Or has it sucked away more of your time that you would be using to create art?

It mainly effected me negatively at one point as I would overthink what people would think of the art before I posted any, which isn't the best mindset to have when creating. Luckily that's not an issue anymore, but it is easy to get mentally sucked into overthinking these things online.

Outside of additional interaction with fellow crypto artists, do you have any other positives you've felt from the larger audience?

There's been a huge amount of positives for me. As that audience has grown, I've been able to get opportunities I never would have beforehand—from being able to do my own clothing drops to crypto exhibitions (SuperRare GenZs, zonted genesis exhibition).

I really am grateful for the support from anyone who's followed me. The main positive, like I said, is the interaction and community online. I've met so many people online this year that I'd love to meet when COVID-19 is over.

A lot of newer artists on SuperRare struggle with pricing. How are you approaching pricing your work? What methods have you tried so far and how have those worked out for you?

Pricing is a tough one. There’s a happy medium that can be hard to find. I mainly try to price my pieces depending on the quality of the piece. I prefer to leave most up for auction because you never know what could happen.

However, my last remaining SuperRare pieces are up for list prices. Hopefully I can have some luck on them in the next few weeks as they’ve been up for a while. I’d just recommend having an open auction for a few weeks, and usually if I've had no luck I'll put a list price on it. I've not had too much success on list prices so far.

A common practice is to conduct deals with collectors over twitter DMs. How do you feel about conducting private deals with collectors? Is that a practice you like doing?

I've had a few interactions over DMs with collectors these past few months. I've had some success but overall not much. But DMs are definitely a great way to conduct deals and also get to know who's collecting your work.

You recently got accepted to MakersPlace, congrats! Now you have to manage 2 separate platforms. Are you thinking about doing things differently across the two? Do the pricing techniques change across different platforms?

Thank you! Yeah it's great I get to experiment on both platforms. I don’t think I'll do much differently between the two, pricing will stay very similar.

But I am contemplating trying out the editions feature on MakersPlace, hopefully make my art more accessible to a wider audience. Like my art, I’m just experimenting with these crypto sites, its all still very new so we will see how it goes!

Interesting. There's been a lot of debate in the crypto art community around the concepts of "scarcity" vs "abundance". How do you feel about that? Should an artist concern themselves by trying to make their art scarce? Or do you feel it's better to abundantly create and mint whatever you want?

I prefer the approach of scarcity over abundance because scarcity makes your work more limited and unique as only one person can own it. Saying that though, doing drops of editions now and then is good too, get more people involved.

At least I'm hoping that I can capture a wider audience when I eventually I do a handful of editions.

You mentioned in a recent interview that you are studying architecture and art currently. Do you envision blending those two fields together in the future? Or do you want to pursue each separately?

I’m currently doing my second year of architecture. I would like to incorporate more of my university skills into my work. I've tried to do a few pieces before but it just seemed too forced. I think the blend of the two will come overtime. But right now, I’m mainly pursing them separately. Let’s hope I can have success with both.

Do you have any works that you'd be willing to show the audience?

Not currently, I'm keeping those close to my chest.

You’re driven to create art because of an insatiable desire to create. What happens on the days where you’re not feeling the drive? How do you combat “artist’s block”?

‘Artists block’ is hard. I've had a lot of those days recently where I just have no motivation to create after a long day or the ideas just aren’t coming. I tend to try not to overthink it and spend that time relaxing or enjoying other things.

I've been using those days to rebuild and usually soon after I get a good idea for a piece or until the urge comes back.

How would you describe your artistic style?

I would describe my work as abstract illustrations that depict a variety of scenes and emotions. I like to build a lot of my characters and forms from a mixture of geometric shapes.

Most of my work is very vibrant and bright but recently I've been experimenting more with a darker colour palette.

We've noticed that there's a bit of influence from "George Condo"'s style. Are there any other artists that have influenced you? What about any new artists that you've been following for inspiration?

There's a few I've been taking inspiration from recently. I've looked a lot at artists like Basquiat, Francis Bacon and Rembrandt—all iconic artists for different reasons.

I have mainly been looking at these, especially Bacon and Rembrandt. Their use of lighting and texture are two aspects I'm really trying to improve on. There's also a huge list of artists on twitter who inspire me on a daily basis. There is so much talent on Twitter honestly.

You’ve been experimenting a lot with your most recent pieces instead of following your “normal recipe”. What have you been trying out? And why the change?

I've been really trying to improve my art recently. I am focusing on my use of colour, shadow, light, texture, and technique. I feel like I just got to a point where I needed to switch things up a little, try out new things and better my art all round.

I've got a lot more ideas I'd like to try out too, ranging from mixed media pieces, to 3D to photography and more design work too. I just want to improve my skillset and grow as an artist.

Any shout outs?

I've been lucky enough to have been supported by so many this year since I started. My main shoutouts would go to my family and friends, both on and off twitter, who have helped me immensely this year—they know who they are.

Big special shoutout to @gambocean again for helping me get started on here and motivating me to get better as an artist.

Notable past exhibitions / praise / press:

• zonted genesis exhibition
  1/1/2021—4/30/2021

The first ever ("genesis") digital art exhibition by zonted art gallery. The exhibition features sculptures, installations, videos, and digital creations by a wide array of notable international artists that are on the forefront of digital art.

Visit the exhibition here: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/parcels/3734

• SuperRare GenZs exhibition
  10/30/20

• SuperRare editorial: "Harvmcm: Alone, but together"
  10/26/2020

Support the artist:

• Website: https://www.harvmcm.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/harvmcm
• artistsourced: https://artistsourced.com/collections/harvmcm
• SuperRare: https://superrare.co/harvmcm
• MakersPlace: https://makersplace.com/harvmcm/