Artist Tommy Hollenstein on his charity NFT drop

0:00i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media in the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have artists tommy hollenstein and abraham gomez gentlemen welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time to come on today thank you ashton thank you're very welcome i've been following tommy's work in the nft space

0:24a little bit here there's a lot of different creative nft projects coming out and i'm especially interested in ones that are going towards a good cause and i know that your team is working on an initiative that is in this space and that's why i want to have you guys on the show and learn a little bit more about the project i would love for you guys to start by just explaining

0:45a little bit about the hollenstein nft project what are the initiatives that you're working on and then we can dive into those details after thank you yeah so this project came about in september of last year so i actually met tommy over a phone call from a mutual friend and was instantly inspired and motivated by tommy and his life

1:12I watched a nine-minute like quick documentary on him and he just fell in love with his story and who he is as a person and so i've i've been in the crypto space for nine years i'm an angel and seed investor and this was a project that i really wanted to take on because of the philanthropic aspect it's doing a lot of good and we'll touch

1:33base on that in a little bit but we started working on it in december and so we've been working on this almost four months now but i'll let tommy go through the logistics of the project itself i'm tommy hollenstein the artist yeah you know a little bit about myself i had a i was born and raised in la here had a bicycle accident 37 almost 37 years ago which i ended up injuring my

1:57spinal cord became a quadriplegic and at that time i was you know during rehab i spent six months in the hospital 19 days in intensive care and they were trying to teach me how to paint with a mouth stick because they knew i want to be an artist since i was five-year-old child and i said that was stolen from me i was completely paralyzed it only shrugged my shoulders when i first got

2:14to the hospital and it was that way for quite a few months so but it just wasn't fluid for me although there's some amazing mouth stick artists out there it just was not my deal and i was a real extreme sports guy outside grew up surfing skateboarding served competitively for most of my life and it was bmxing all the time and i was getting into mountain biking when my

2:34bike was first getting started so anyway so i didn't do anything artistically for quite a while but then all of a sudden one day i just started i painted with the tires in my wheelchair i used that as my paintbrush and i started creating art and creating art creating art and once i got about 32 pieces i kind of unorthodox way started going different

2:52galleries and showing my art i finally got one lady to say yes there's a very high-end gallery out in calabasas california and she said yes listen to a show so that's my first solo show and i sold 19 19 20 paintings that day and they did quite well and a few celebrities happen to show up and joaquin phoenix being one of them it was right during the same time that walk the

3:15line came out so when he walked out the door two paintings he got me into a newspaper got me a little gravity and i just started really working hard since that point on and i've been very blessed to do shows all over the country and sell all over the world yeah wow incredible backstory tommy thank you for sharing that and that just makes me even more excited

3:35to talk about this current nft project because it's not just a digital project which normally people think of nfts as digital art although they are much more than that and they can have much more and i know that you're also incorporating physical work into this nft drop with your artwork in from what i understand one of the largest paintings that i've ever heard of

3:57maybe you can talk a little bit about about this nft drop the artwork itself and how you're working on it the artwork itself is if i mean a 100 physical piece that i'm creating with the tires of my chair the total size of the piece is 20 feet by 400 feet yes that's right 20 feet by 400 feet longer than a football field there's a thousand boards that are 24 inches by 48 inches i create

4:25100 at a time but then i bring that last row from 100 pieces up to the front row and add another 100 boards so i started off with four colors in the first hundred boards then i went to five colors in the next 100 and i connected them all and the final set of 100 boards which will be today we'll have 13 colors on them and so you're starting off with a you

4:47know a lot of negative white space behind the first couple hundred and then it moves to where there's almost very very little negative space and the paints that i'm using are very very beautiful colors bright vibrant colors because that's how i paint that's how i create i'm i'm inspired by nature you know i go on a hike i see some beautiful flowers beautiful birds the colors that god's

5:06created and you can barely duplicate that in the color but bear process has created those colors for me all custom colors for this project in and of itself which i'm grateful have their support as well and it's just been a great project i mean to be you know painting for us five five and a half weeks straight four days a week sometimes eight ten hours a day literally

5:27you know i had to create a process where i have a bottle that feeds the paint to my tires rather than have a human being going behind me with a bucket of paint and applying paint that's how you usually typically paint is having somebody apply the paint physically and so this process allows me to lay down a little bit thinner lines so you can see through the collars it's

5:44just it's it's a beautiful piece yeah and then we're cutting each board into ten pieces and it's coming up with ten thousand separate nft pieces which have been done physically 100 by an artist not computer generated at all yep and we also have have had some great contributors so i'd love for you to chat on that a little bit you know over the years i've had quite a

6:07few you know celebrity clients and i've built friendships all these with these people for the last 15 16 years so a lot of when they found out about the project they want to help participate you know i've got my friend risk who's a very well-known graffiti artist and i spent some time out of his studio as well with over the last year year and a half creating pieces as well

6:27so he came out he was the first one to come out and help apply paint to the boards and tires and we've created some some artwork on top of my artwork together i've had ringo starr come out he and i created about a four color piece together and then i also have you know people apply their handprints i've had you know my friend chris bauer he said he's a well-known actor

6:45james franco my buddy jose he's the drummer for incubus so my buddy joey santiago he's with the pixies so some well-known musicians have all come out as well and it's just been a lot of fun you know for them just to see the piece physically because everybody's been watching on instagram live and whatnot but it looks large on photographing on video but when you

7:06come in this room and you see this physical piece it's it's pretty overwhelming so it's just been a great fun project i mean i can imagine doing a 20 foot by 40 foot piece which is the size of that room but not 400 feet so i mean to be able to come up with this physical piece i mean it's a lot of mileage we've been timing the mileage it's over 77 miles

7:25of tracks going down on those those boards yeah wow incredible and great backers there it sounds like everyone's coming together for a great cause and i really do appreciate that the physical aspect and just the whole story behind building the art and you know synchronizing with nature i do love it tommy so great work so far i'm interested more on for the

7:47viewers as well to like learn more about these pieces you know why should they be getting a piece how can they get the physical pieces as well as the digital pieces and what kind of cause does it go towards for the for the funds when they're purchasing an nft yeah so the physical pieces we thought of this creative thing so we go on clubhouse and we've had a few

8:14conversations and the general consensus was that we should add a unique variable to receiving or redeeming the physical art piece and so what we came up with was for you to receive the physical art piece you would it's a ticket to meet tommy in person so when you meet tommy you're instantly inspired he has a great story he's a great person love to hang out with him everyone that

8:35knows him just absolutely loves him so if you buy the digital piece you can meet tommy and redeem the physical piece of which then tommy will sign we also expect to take this project around to different museums and so you can potentially go to museums to your collection or your nft in the collection and then redeem it there at the museum so those are the two ways one is you can

8:59fly directly to los angeles tommy's based out of los angeles which is you know fairly easy city to fly to if you live in the u.s but we also hopefully will be able to take the pieces globally to different museums that's kind of what we've thought through so far on the redeeming aspect some of the utility that we're adding i'm an investor in a company called

9:24keak.com and so we're going to add that utility so it's lifetime access to keek which is really cool you guys have to check that out and then we tommy has some awesome merchandise so if you own one of the nfts you're gonna get exclusive access to merchandise and then also exclusive merchandise in the matter reverse so we're working on 3d

9:46modeling his current merch so you can also get that in the reverse that's basically the total utilities that we have thus far on the charitable aspect we are giving 10 to the dream center and tommy if you want to touch base on the dream center a little bit the dream center is a church in downtown l.a right off the 101 freeway it's the old queen of angels hospital oldest

10:09hospital in the city and they've been here since 27 years now and they started they do a lot of outreach they literally house about 75 men that are coming off of drugs and alcohol it's a one-year free program and they can stay a second year if they want even up to a third year for going into leadership same with the women they've got a housing project for

10:31Emancipated minors kids that are once they turn 18 and we know the foster care system they can come live here and get work skills and if they haven't graduated high school the least they're going to leave here with us the ged and then just get life skills and then once you leave here they've been here for like a two year period and then they

10:50can go out to the community have a job and whatnot 32 trucks a day leave here delivering food to the community during the pandemic 5 000 people they were being fed through a dr hot meal breakfast lunch and dinner as well as diapers and supplies and whatever they needed we're just giving out free it's just amazing it's it's it's unbelievable when you see how much

11:12activity is going around here on a daily basis and there's literally 200 active ministries going around they've got a gymnasium for local kids in the area to come play basketball you know get them off the streets and have stuff like that they've got tutoring for children in the neighborhood when there was the full lockdown they had an outdoor school

11:28because you know a lot of people were using school as a babysitting baby sydney system and the parents were allowed to bring their kids here and they had access to computers and computer lab they've got some military homeless vets have a place to come stay men and women and it's it's just amazing what goes on here so 10 is going to be coming to the dream center here as well

11:50and we are going to be donating 10 percent to the victims of ukraine for this crazy war that's going on right now as well and then some of the money's going to go hopefully versus a large studio so that i can i've been teaching kids how to paint with the tires of the chair for quite a few years at different functions different variations even at children's

12:09hospital in boston i did a project out there one time probably the most rewarding thing i'd ever done in my life there were those terminal kids that were you know having the joy of painting so for them to be able to come to a place on a weekly basis is my dream yeah incredible tommy thank you for sharing that and for inspiring people of all ages to get involved

12:31in this and to give back and i really appreciate what you're doing with the dream center and everything that you mentioned there so thank you so much and that leads me to the next question which is how can people get access to the nfts and the artwork and get involved and make sure that they're being a part of this contribution to these initiatives yeah thank you so much so

12:53we have an auction march 10th the auction is going to be some of the more rare pieces so it'll be like ringo starr's left hand james franco's left hand you know other celebrities artists musicians and then it'll also be one of their normal pieces so it'll be like because they all put their handprints on the piece that they created so it'll be their left hand and then

13:15it'll be one of the normal pieces that they helped create and so we're gonna auction those off and then we have an interview later today with good morning america which should air sometime later in the month once that errors is when we plan on doing the public sale but yeah so march 10th is actually the day of the accident and i believe that's 38 years ago

13:3737 years ago 37 years ago did the accident yeah so we'll have the auction march 10th and then we the public sale will be later in march or early april incredible and congratulations on getting on good morning america i feel like sharing this story needs to be shared with more people so i think that's a great avenue for that and are they going to be specifically on

14:02like tommy's website with access through the wallet or how exactly do people purchase them yes so tommyhollandsign.com is where you're going to be able to implement the public sale the auction is actually gonna be on open c which would be i believe it's let me make sure this correct so it should be open c dot io slash tommyhollenstein nft

14:26i believe that's the correct url you might need dashes between tommy hall and nft nonetheless we can send you the link and you can add it below the video definitely amazing well thank you so much gentlemen i really appreciate you coming on to speak about this initiative i'm honored to be able to share the message and looking forward to the pre-sale on openc

14:49i will definitely leave the description in the description a link to the pre-sale and as well i'll follow along for the public sale all the best with this initiative i'm really looking forward to seeing these art pieces and delivered and have them in people's homes i think it's just so cool especially because you're getting an nft and the physical piece so

15:08incredible work all the best to this project and the launch i'm wishing you guys all the best for the 10th and beyond and if there's anything else please do let me know otherwise let's follow up in the near future about this initiative thank you so much have a great one