[Spotlight] Staying Stabby with artist WoodenCyclops

For my latest Spotlight Interview, I had the opportunity to connect with the Portland-based artist WoodenCyclops aka Wesley James.

Early on in life Wooden caught the artistic bug inspired in part by the comic art featured in Mad Magazine, Cracked Magazine, and Garbage Pail Kids, as well as by artists like Ralph Steadman and other low-brow 1970's vintage aesthetic art. He's been creating art professionally for over 20 years and started minting his digital art in 2021.

We talk about the genesis of his "Tank Dog" and "Dobberman Stabbers" series before deep diving into the Stabbers which started out as a repeated meditation on confronting the question of life & death.

The Stabbers themselves represent Wooden's focus on pushing forward on a specific path, testing himself and revealing new layers of himself. Stylistically each Stabber is cut from the same cloth, so to speak: dogs, sometimes Tank Dogs, are portrayed in varying phases of stabbing, that are then combined and molded into various shapes and figures. In his own words, the creation of each new Stabber, representative of Wooden himself, "Is like killing the previous version of myself off to make room for the next."

Over the past five years, Stabbers have evolved into a broader canvas that allowed Wooden to re-interpret popular figures and icons in the crypto space such as pepe and Elon Musk as seen in as seen in "⁠Feels Stabbed Man⁠" and "Chief Dogerman Tweeter" respectively. This evolution helped unlocked the concept behind his upcoming collection "Stabber Legends" featuring re-interpretations of works by Pop Wonder (Shelter), Matt Kane (CRYPTOART MONETIZATION GENERATION), Coldie (Proof of Stake - Genesis), XCOPY (Right-click And Save As guy), and Fewocious (Moment I Fell In Love) set to drop on Nifty Gateway tomorrow April 5th at 6:30 pm ET [Link to collection page].

I hope you enjoy this Spotlight Interview, and if you vibe with Wooden and his art please check out the rest of his body of work.

Links for WoodenCyclops:

Twitter
SuperRare
Linktree