Artist Anthony Sims Breaks into the Digital World of NFTs

His work combines technology, art, and cryptocurrency. And at age 22, the native Memphian is just getting started.

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Since the start of the year, 22-year-old Anthony Sims has sold 18 pieces of cryptoart, with each piece selling for $2,000 to $3,000 — a considerable amount considering the pieces are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), collectible images stored and visible on the internet. At the end of last year, the Southaven-born artist only learned about this medium of cryptoart, and in January he began selling NFTs at a relatively rapid pace.

Sims, a longtime Memphian now working in Dallas, will hold a limited-capacity show on Thursday, April 22, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Hi Tone Cafe. Tickets will be sold at the door. Prints, shirts, stickers, and art will be for sale, and the first 25 people will receive a free NFT by Sims.

He compares NFTs to car titles: “If I give you my car today and you drive it all the way to Canada, I still own my car. I still have the title for it, even though it's thousands of miles away. You just have it for that moment.”

“This is a whole new world that we’ve entered, and it’s just kind of barely broken through the mainstream.” — Anthony Sims

Sims still creates physical pieces of art and often makes them into NFTs to sell in tandem with the original piece. Sometimes he even combines the physical with the digital and animates elements of the original painting for the NFT. However, unlike traditional physical art, Sims adds, the contracts for NFTs direct that the artist gets 10 percent for every sale. If the original buyer sells a piece to someone else, the artist gets 10 percent of that subsequent sale and for any sales thereafter. “I basically have a permanent 10 percent equity in my brand [as an artist],” Sims says.

Until recently, Sims “wasn't interested in making a career in art because it’s something that seems impossible.” But, he continues, “I consider myself a dreamer, so I was like, I’m going to pursue art, but I'm also going to pursue my love for electricity.” As such, Sims earned an associate degree in electrical engineering, and he currently works as a robotics technician in Dallas — all the while producing art and creating a reputation for himself as an artist. But NFTs have “made it a lot easier for [him] to marry [his] love of technology and art because it’s a place where it’s acceptable and profitable.”

Sales of NFTs have skyrocketed this year. “This is a whole new world that we’ve entered,” Sims says, “and it’s just kind of barely broken through the mainstream.” In March, an NFT by graphic designer Beeple, titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days, sold for $69 million, while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million.

“NFT technology is completely a game changer for absolutely everything,” Sims says. “I’ve always believed in cryptocurrency — that it was going to be more than a trend … NFTs might not be the thing that takes us to the future [of the internet], but they will be the foundation of the next wave of our existence and the way we connect with each other.”

“I don’t necessarily make art to make money, but the fact that I can make money from making art is mind-blowing, and I’m so grateful.” — Anthony Sims

Sims has worked diligently to gain credibility. In the beginning of his career, he made connections within the Memphis art community, had shows at Stock&Belle, and was named one of the Memphis Ten at the Jack Robinson Gallery in 2018. In 2019, when personal family problems arose and left his family on the verge of homelessness, Sims continued to pursue his art, earning himself a spot in Steve Kaufman’s American Pop Art Collective by the end of the year.

From there, he went on to produce cover art for NugLife, Issa Gold, and Yung Simmie, and he had shows in Austin and Memphis. And when the pandemic struck, canceling the next five shows he had planned for 2020, Sims began emailing museums to try to get his work displayed. Within three months, he estimates he sent around 500 emails. Eventually the Meridian Museum of Art in Meridian, Mississippi, accepted two of his pieces for their permanent collection.

“I don’t necessarily make art to make money,” Sims says, “but the fact that I can make money from making art is mind-blowing, and I’m so grateful.” With the success his NFT sales have brought, Sims now has the means to invest in his friends’ work; he’s even begun to exhibit the digital pieces in his “Sims Museum,” a museum that exists in the metaverse Decentraland.

Decentraland, he explains, is “like the Sim’s world,” but you can buy parcels of “land” in it. (Right now, parcels are selling for anywhere between $6,000 to $100,000.) Sims hopes to one day turn this digital museum into a physical one. Until then, he will keep painting and creating.

Sims’ art often features skulls, skeletons, and bold colors. He says, “I don’t really know what color I am [having a white mom and a Mexican dad], so I am all the colors but a skeleton.” His use of skulls also ties back to his Mexican heritage that he feels disconnected from, having been raised in a white community, not knowing Spanish or Mexican culture. The skull, in turn, becomes a representation of “a loss of identity and a desire for identity.”

When he paints, he says, “I don’t think about art; I don’t think about anything other than emotion. I don’t go up to a canvas and say this is what I’m going to paint; I just go up to a canvas and just start writing on it, drawing on it, and it just forms itself into something.”

However, he notes, “the one [emotion] I find myself going back to is the contemplation of my own death. But it’s not done in a dark way — that's why I like the way my skeletons look. My skeletons aren’t scary; they're calm looking,” even among the chaos of bold colors and geometric figures. “There are so many things that I want to talk about,” he says, “but I can’t, and so I paint.”

For more information about Anthony Sims, visit his website.