Studio Visit with Christy Stallop

Originally recorded April 12, 2022.

George Irwin of Western Gallery visits with Christy Stallop for a wide-ranging conversation about the artist’s work, process, and studio practice.

Transcript note: Speaker labels were assigned from the source audio where available and dialogue context otherwise. Paragraph breaks were added for readability, and verbal filler was lightly edited. Joint labels mark rapid or overlapping exchanges. This was prepared from an automated transcription, so minor transcription errors may remain.

Instagram Live studio visit—April 12, 2022

Watch the original video on Instagram (34:15)

Participants: George Irwin and Christy Stallop

George Irwin: Hey everyone! Alright let's see. This is going to go better than last time so not in regards to the NFTs but in regards to the live video, so thank you for tuning in y'all. I'm about to see if I can get Christy Stallop on here and we're gonna talk about some grackles. And I don't know if you've had a chance yet, but go visit western.gallery, click over the Impermanent Collection and you can see these crazy paintings that Christy has made and they're just really incredible. Hey Rose! And not only that, but eventually... I've been having some real trouble the past couple days getting the NFTs that last like one like foot on the mile but they will get there and I'm excited about it as still even though it's just you know been a difficult hill to climb but that's alright. Anyway let's see I want to see if... Oh, Dixie's on here. All right, cool. I'm trying to see

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: if i can get um, Christy on here

Christy Stallop: Here we go.

George Irwin: So there's a couple things that I want to do uh for this live and you know kind of one is introduce the body of work which is really incredible so if you have a browser handy that's not on your phone. Hey Denise, and let's see, and that you can go look at the works simultaneously? That's really cool if not check them out later western.gallery I'm wearing my this... I don't usually wear a bandana but I thought I should today because because Christy actually gave this to me and this is the bandana that the buckaroo is wearing in the buckeroo painting. Christy says she's on but she doesn't know what to do. Let's see if I can, I think I invited you Christy but maybe it went away. Let me try again. It says you're unable to join let me try again. And if that doesn't work, Christy, maybe you can request up there we go. We

Christy Stallop: got it before I know but my computer wouldn't it wouldn't hook up so now I had to run and get my phone well I don't know anything about technical

George Irwin: issues so I don't have no patience for that. You're here now. Yeah so anyway I was just saying, Kristy, I wanted to do a couple things and one of them is Yeah, it requires glasses. One of them is to do our giveaway. So I was gonna... What's that? Are you talking about the NFT? The NFT that doesn't exist yet yes but it will exist. It's I'm on the final stretch of this weird issue. If anyone cares my MetaMask thing that Western Gallery is associated with got a transaction stuck and I just can't do anything with it. And I have to be able to do that in order to put these things on sale, etc. Long story, it's going to get worked out but ready yet. However they are gonna be you know we've made all the images and we've got all the up on the you know the blockchain or whatever. Alright so I was gonna do the thing, the giveaway and here it is. Alright I have... can any of you guys do

George Irwin: this trick? This is cool. I'm not actually on my phone right now. All right, so there's 99 comments. That means 99 entries I bet like 50 of them are Lucy. So Lucy it's a shame if you don't win this but I'm just gonna do this kind of thing. I'm going to go all the way to the bottom and then go all the top and I'm not even looking and I am going to go. And what does this say? The odds worked in your favor Lucy, you win!

Christy Stallop: Thank God! That would have been so sad if she had...

George Irwin: I know, I mean she really put some effort into that. So congratulations Lucy, I will be sending you whatever Grackle that was on there. Grackle number three. Grackle Number Three in the Serape and the Red Heart glasses. So you're going to be the proud new owner of a Grackle, and I'll be sure to do that one first and send it right away to you.

Christy Stallop: And the paper dolls?

George Irwin: Yes, and the paperdolls which come with it. That was the next thing I was going to do. And yeah, so each NFT comes with, is ideally comes with the paper dolls. If it doesn't then I will send you them anyway. But we've got the paper doll's here in action and this was the one I showed the other day with the boa.

Christy Stallop: You can make your own accessories too.

George Irwin: Yeah if you wanna make your accessories you can but they won't have been painted by Kristi Stallitt. Um, this one was. And what else we have here? Oh, we've got the red bandana.

Christy Stallop: Oh, you cut them all out. Well some of them... And you could laminate them so they last.

George Irwin: Yeah I was gonna say this would work much better if you had like cards stock or something. I just had like crap computer paper so that's what I used.

Christy Stallop: And you could put them on a magnet laminate fridge.

George Irwin: Oh, I'm gonna do that.

Christy Stallop: Yeah, on the fridge. That'd be fun.

George Irwin: Here we have the Grack of All Trades.

Christy Stallop: My husband came with his name.

George Irwin: Anyway, so technical issues aside, these paintings are awesome, Kristy. And I am so grateful that you agreed to work with me on this project and I think it's really just a cool bunch of birds.

Christy Stallop: Well, I'm honored that you chose me for the first, and that was pretty exciting.

George Irwin: Well, it just made sense to me too like these... You're already painting grackles with accessories and the way the generative NFTs work, it just made sense to do something like that for a first NFT project. So we can really celebrate I guess once they're actually done but um i wanted to say thank you and cheers to this to the to the project.

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: Is that a beer? This is a beer yeah. Damn it! I have lots of...

George Irwin: Oh, well let's not cheers them. That might be bad luck I think. Is it? I don't know. I started singing out the other day and I think maybe I made it up but um let's call it good luck. No you should have told me. Yeah so um that's it we Kristy made these amazing paintings We chopped them up in Photoshop and put a script in there. I didn't touch a script.

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: Go Art Mom, is that your son?

Christy Stallop: No, probably not on social media my boys.

George Irwin: Bradley oh yeah ranch butter is good that counts and oh that's right your boys are like anti social media and stuff or not anti but a social media they probably aren't I okay um and yeah so that's a good that's kind of a good segue can you tell us a little bit about where the cringe background came

Christy Stallop: from Christine? My son who said we were cringe and I was cringe for doing it and so I had

George Irwin: to make a cringe background. And when I sent it to him he said that's pretty cool. Weedled

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: in there! Yeah, what was he saying was cringe that we were doing an NFT project? Yeah just

Christy Stallop: NFTs as a whole are cringe. Interesting. Though I had to change his mind. He probably likes their cringe, but he likes the cringe one. Yeah. Yeah that's pretty cool. I love the graffiti backgrounds. Yeah they're fun. That was your idea. That

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: was your ideas. Except only because you had done them before. I had yeah.

George Irwin: I mean, as is evidence right behind you. Yeah, well I think this has been a really fun project. I'm really excited. I know that there are a couple paintings that have already found homes with other artists and collect an artist collector and an artist-collector. And one mean woman, I would like to tell you that you can find a little bit more about the NFTs on western.gallery if you click through to the Impermanent Collection. There's a link that goes I think and it shows all of them I think up right now on OpenSea. I just can't list them for sale because there's a problem with my wallet so... Always the wallet. Yeah in one way or another I will have them up somewhere available, but right now you can look at them if you go to like openc.io slash, openc dot i o slash collection slash gracles with a z so um you can see I think

George Irwin: you can all hundred of them plus the other eight that are paired specifically with their

Christy Stallop: oil paintings. I found out who Go Art Mom was, it was Michael part of our my beginning art group and I am a artist wrangler so he would call me mom because I'd be like get

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: going do your art. Oh awesome! Was that the group where you first started doing oil painting?

Christy Stallop: No, this is way like my first and second east a little group of us It was storming out. So nobody came to see art and we bonded. Oh, that's cool. Yeah

George Irwin: Yeah, I haven't been looking I've kind of been noticing the comments as they've been going by but Thanks for the rep for the comment Brad Leo And if you guys have questions about this, I would love to do like sort of a Q&A if we can. And so...

Christy Stallop: You look and talk at the same time. Yeah that's hard. I see them.

George Irwin: I will tell you what, I'll read the questions if they come in. And then you and I can answer them as it makes sense. But there might be more questions if we've actually had the NFTs available. Do any of you guys out there know about NFT's to begin with?

Christy Stallop: You should explain it.

George Irwin: Do I need to give like a little primer? I think you should. I know I need do this in a more thorough way, which is I've started but haven't gotten published yet. Okay, everybody prepare to just like zone out. NFTs are non-fungible tokens on a blockchain and that means that they are unique in each registered entity. Thanks Gina, mind exploding. And they're good for art because they can represent ownership of an image. So this is like the first chance that people who create digital work can claim ownership to something like a JPEG, which anybody can just copy, right click, you know, right-click save and they have the image but they can't claim that they own it anymore because the ownership is assigned to the person who's registered it on the blockchain, which you know ideally is the artist and or collaborator of the artist like in this case.

George Irwin: So that creates like the ability for something to be real in a way so it's kind of an exciting thing and it's creating a way for artists to make a living doing what they love in a way beyond selling just one painting or one sculpture. And it's kind of cool and then there's also these new things like the generative stuff which is one of those things that's really exciting about this Grackles project is that that, you know, Christy made all these different backgrounds and accessories and in the bird. And then, you know, we've made, we chose 100. We could have generated like 5000 of them or something, but we wanted to keep it.

Christy Stallop: It was hard too. They were all adorable I thought.

George Irwin: Yeah, so we limited. Yeah, you're a little bit biased, but they were awesome. I'm biased to. Anyway, so we limited it to 100 and we made like you know we kind of picked some of the cool ones, extra cool ones and anyway, it's there that it's kind of like a print release except each one is unique. And so I don't really know have the best way to explain it. It's excitable. It' exciting, excitable, exciting. And then as far as acquiring an NFT and what do you do with it, that's a question I get all the time is like one why do I want one? Two how do I display it? And three how would I get it? So one why'd you want one we kind of just talked about that. I think that you know you have the ownership of the work and it's part of collection, kind of like having a signed Picasso print right? That's part of your collection and Picasso signed it himself. And that's special. In this case you know

George Irwin: you'd have like the digital signature of the artist authorizing the piece and no one can dispute it because it's on the blockchain. All right so two is how would I display it? There are a few different options and we're really so early into the NFT thing that there's not a lot of great things yet, but most people just keep them in their wallets and look at them like on their phones or something. But more and more people are starting to display them in person on a special either screen like on your wall which is you know you can do like you know have your computer screen and display it on that. Or you can get like a special NFT display screen that you can hang, that's got like a nice wooden frame and stuff now. There are a few different versions of that. And then you can have it up on your wall, just like a regular piece of art except that I guess it's got a plug or something.

George Irwin: And then there are even more intense and crazy ways to display. You could project it. there are exhibitions of NFTs now that have wild displays, like weird holographic kind of projections and stuff that is really exciting to think about how these things can inhabit a space beyond just staring into a computer screen or a phone screen. And in a way it sort of gives them like a tangible existence when you see them like that, I guess too. But anyway, so that's you guys can tune back in now and I'm done with that part. Oh, I forgot the third question. How do you get one? You have to have a crypto wallet. Hopefully it's not messed up like mine was and you just get onto OpenSea with your crypto wallet and then you can buy one for the token that it's listed at. So maybe in our case Polygon is the chain and Matic is

George Irwin: the token so you would need to have like X dollars of Matic I think they're priced it right now like 0.05 ETH which equates to about $160 or like 110 MATIC something like that so this is insane yeah if you're uh if you are confused you're not alone but um it's gonna continue to get easier and it's a I I think it's an exciting new medium for art of all kinds. So thank you, Christy, for working with me to do... Oh my god. ... forge into this like digital no man's land.

Christy Stallop: It was so fun! I'm gonna miss our hats!

George Irwin: Yeah well, I mean we can keep working on stuff.

Christy Stallop: Sounds good.

George Irwin: My side? So I think there's only a few more, excuse me, only several of you all on here at the moment right now. Do you have any questions about NFTs or about Grackles or Christy's work or anything that we can kind of talk to for a little bit? Or are you guys ready to just say cheers and go check it out and get yourself a Grackle painting?

Christy Stallop: Here's my cat. My studio cat is whining at me right now.

George Irwin: What's its name?

Christy Stallop: Loaf.

George Irwin: Oh, right that's right.

Christy Stallop: Loaf the cat.

George Irwin: Loaf The Cat. Hard at work as usual.

Christy Stallop: He wants dinner.

George Irwin: Christy you said you were working on some of the accessories that went... went, so Kristi painted the accessories.

Christy Stallop: I'm gonna go get some.

George Irwin: Without a character underneath them and so since then this morning, the past couple of days she's started to paint the Grackle character into the accessories so that we have some more additional eight by eight paintings that we can add to the collection when they're ready. And so as I think maybe she's going to get something that we could look at.

Christy Stallop: So yeah, I haven't done all of them, but like they start off like that.

George Irwin: Yeah, so there, yeah.

Christy Stallop: Yeah, that's the one we used on the NFT. And so then I've been painting and they're not finished. They're in the early stages, but like...

George Irwin: Oh man, that awesome.

Christy Stallop: I don't know if you can see him. He doesn't have all the glistening stuff yet and I'm still working on his feathers and like the sides. I love it.

George Irwin: Oh yeah, I got the smoker. Yeah, so I'm adding them in because why not?

Christy Stallop: They're little, you know, about some of them I can't but most of them might can.

George Irwin: Gina has a great question, I suppose which is, Christy how did you decide to take the NFT plunge? Is it intimidating as an analog artist?

Christy Stallop: Oh George just asked. I never intended on doing that.

George Irwin: He approached me and said, hey would you? And I'm like why not?

Christy Stallop: You know, why not. I'm always trying something new so we'll try the NFT thing. And he had to do it before and I just drew the little images and he did all the other stuff.

George Irwin: I drew the images, yeah. Like, you know, just drew some images and that's how it works right? Yeah, well right so I've been curious about NFTs being the technologist and a gallery person and it's on lookout for you know potential projects and we at least have to talking about

Christy Stallop: it.

George Irwin: Yeah, we've been talking about it for years. And yeah, the project came to mind that made a lot of sense and Kristi and I talked about it and she, you know I guess part of my job as a gallerist is to try and keep these things that are potentially intimidating to artists out of their face in a way.

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: Like I appreciate to try to try trying to try

George Irwin: and reduce the intimidation factor so that artists can do their thing. And so that's kind of how we did it. you know, it's very much a collaboration as far as the NFTs are concerned. Like, Kristi did the paintings and I did the Photoshop mostly and then I sent her back a Photoshop file and she edited it and sent it back to me and then we both went through and picked out ones that we liked and and I've put them up and have messed them up and fixing them. So, anyway it's been a fun process.

Christy Stallop: It has, it was a good collaboration for sure.

George Irwin: Yeah, that's something that's been interesting is like, Kristy you collaborate really well. You're very, I think that it's not true for all artists. I think that you are very open and willing to accept feedback and suggestion. I love it.

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: And yeah, which has been really cool.

Christy Stallop: Take it but a lot of times having another perspective is so valuable that I think more people can do it.

George Irwin: You guys hear that?

Christy Stallop: No!

George Irwin: Hear what? I put my earphones in, I didn't know how much it was picked up. But okay, it's okay.

Christy Stallop: I've got to... I think some artists get very narrow in their ideas and that's great to definitely have your voice but times to step outside yourself and hear what someone else has to say could be extremely valuable. That's why critique groups are so important and something you never even thought of or not even in your wheelhouse. So I find it very valuable.

George Irwin: Yeah, well yeah definitely and I mean it's a, and I don't know maybe it's just like we both, like our personalities worked well together too so it was fun.

Christy Stallop: Yeah, it was fine.

George Irwin: So, and hopefully that comes through I think that the paintings themselves turned out really fun and the NFTs are really fun so I hope you guys enjoy them And I'll follow up with an email and a post or something on here with information about the NFTs when they're available for real, hopefully in the next day or two. And it will be-

Christy Stallop: Hey get in there!

George Irwin: It'll be exciting. What's that?

Christy Stallop: You gotta make some coffee so you can pull in all night or get that in there.

George Irwin: Yeah no kidding. All right well Kristy thanks for coming on here today and for painting and for my pleasure, crackling it up. And we will yeah, I'm not sure what that means, but it worked. Oh, how many galleries are dipping into NFTs? Mark, that's a good question. I don't know. I think you know, it also depends on the genre of work. I think the more contemporary leaning galleries are, there's probably more of them in the NFT space.

Christy Stallop: I know they're different NFTs of like old master works. I've seen that-

George Irwin: That's interesting. Who's doing that?

Christy Stallop: Honestly, I think it was possibly even the Louvre, like some, not too old about which ones, but popular ones, maybe the Mona Lisa, like pieces of NFTs. I think any museum would take advantage of this because it's good for them too. Vote me on any of that though. It could be complete bullshit, I don't know. I remember hearing something.

George Irwin: Can you imagine having an authorized copy of the Monalisa just like on your phone?

Christy Stallop: Yeah, it'd be-

George Irwin: That'd be interesting.

Christy Stallop: Yeah, I'm sure it went for a lot of money.

George Irwin: Oh yeah, I mean, well especially if it was just one. I know. Sometimes they do like series, like a big edition of the same image like they'd put prints on her but...

Christy Stallop: If I'm wrong-

George Irwin: Other times they're individual. Sorry what was that?

Christy Stallop: I said if I'm about all that just all the complaints to George, I don't know.

George Irwin: Yeah send complaints to info at Western Dog Gallery or DM me. Yeah. All right well congratulations again Lucy for winning the giveaway, we'll connect and I'll get you your NFT. Let's see, paper dolls, I guess I gave you like a demo of these things, I forgot to show you the whole printout or whatever but you've seen it if you haven't there will be more of

Christy Stallop: that to come. It says, I think an artist has no copyright on an NFT and I believe they retain

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: no? No yeah you're wrong. That's not correct Mark. The artist can... Time it sells or something isn't... it's copyrighted right? Yeah any the sale of an NMT unless like specifically

George Irwin: like written into the contract does not transfer ownership of the copyright. So intellectual property stays with the artist.

Christy Stallop: Yes, even if you bought a painting that copyright would still be right.

George Irwin: Yeah, same for physical works is like you get the painting but you don't have the right to reproduce it commercially so and the same thing with NFT.

Christy Stallop: Good questions. Yeah, good questions.

George Irwin: These are some good discussion. Anybody else?

Christy Stallop: Come on people.

George Irwin: Music. Oh man. I'm such a fanboy. Ethan do you have any NFT questions? We're talking NFTs here. Not to put you in the spot. We're otherwise, I think we're probably about to wrap things up in a few minutes.

Christy Stallop: Anyone?

George Irwin: I guess we better go before I have any more screaming children coming running through. How are they feeling by the way? They're doing better. Everybody was better and one got sick yesterday night last night and I think he's doing better again to now. So.

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: When are artists not to collect?

George Irwin: What does that say? When should an artist offer not to collects?

Christy Stallop: I don't know what the-

George Irwin: Sure thing, Mark. I'm not sure what you're asking there, Leanna. Would you mind rephrasing your question a little bit? When should and artist offer not to collected? Peanut pan. Can you explain in the tease? I'm not gonna do it right now because we did do it earlier, but I will point you to I guess Rewatch this and fast-forward to that part Probably about ten minutes or so in When I do anyway cuz he's explained it to me so many times. I'm just like okay Yeah, so it's a I mean I mean, they're weird and they're digital. So the end. Yeah so if you are curious about NFTs, there's a little bit of an explanation prior to now in this thing. When should an artist offer art collector the NFT of the originals they bought? Oh, anytime. I would think like, if you can do it simultaneously the originals are sold, like we're doing with these eight custom paintings of the

George Irwin: Grackle of the Multi-Potential Light. If you've already sold the painting to a collector and you want to offer them an NFT, you can. You can create an NFP using that image if you still have the IP and then offer that to them or and you know how however you want to figure out that transaction it's up to you. You can like you don't have to, you can mint it and then just transfer it to their wallet if they have one. There may be some hand-holding for collectors that are not familiar with NFTs but that's all part of the process of us all getting online into the space. Like it's like when the internet happens, it's a whole new thing.

Christy Stallop: I'm gonna figure it out.

George Irwin: I think well we all are. I mean I was in the tech support trying to figure out what was going on and you know I was like hey I'm new to this um IPFS which is inter- interplanetary file system FYI. Planetary? Yeah because it's a distributed file network and i guess that's the name of it um and in the response of the tech support person is like oh yeah we all are because it's a fairly, it's still you know like it seems old to me because I've been like reading about and learning about it for a year and still I'm new to it but it's so like most people are not aware of what's going on with NFTs and the way things that work or the way it all works for sure. I mean it's it's still in this space.

Christy Stallop: No I've read a couple of articles and I'm still just like don't know

George Irwin: know what the hell they're talking about. Yeah. Hey Ed, how are you doing? Oh man okay maybe time for me to go. But generally happy by the way, the boys are generally happy. They're just hungry and I'm not in my office anymore. I don't know the scenery is different because I'm out in my living room. Yeah, alright guys, I'm really gonna cut this off now and Christy it's been a pleasure as always. Thank you guys. Check out the

Christy Stallop: rackles and NFTs if you're curious. Alright adios. Bye George. Bye Christy. Bye everybody.

Studio clip—April 11, 2022

Watch the original video on Instagram (00:34)

Participants: George Irwin and Christy Stallop

Christy Stallop: I always wanted to learn oil but I was afraid of it. I didn't know how it operated, I didn'y know... I heard things about like spontaneous combustion. That really

George Irwin / Christy Stallop: freaked me out! Like I have this trash can. Oh my gosh! You gotta bring that out here. Okay. So we could see. I mean... This is so you know if you have a flammable thing

Christy Stallop: Yeah, you throw it in here and okay cool Safety first