30 Aug 2023/5 min/Grant Yun
MLow X Grant Yun
Grant Yun walks MLow through his walls, his wallet and his record shelf, and explains how a doctor in Wisconsin builds an art career measured in decades.
This is a 45 minute studio visit disguised as an interview. MLow opens with his signature question, what should collectors know about your art, and Grant answers that they do not need to know anything: he wants people to collect for an emotional connection, because his work is deliberately vague enough that anyone can map their own life onto it. From there the two tour Grant's physical wall (a Shepard Fairey print, an Avant Arte drop with Tom Sachs, a Josef Albers print won on Artsy, his own En Route artist proof, the Midwest piece that sold at Christie's that summer, a Daniel Arsham and IKEA clock) and his digital collecting habits, which run toward Chromie Squiggles and early factory era Art Blocks.
The spine of the conversation is Grant's double life. Medicine runs on strict external clocks, exams, applications and fifteen minute patient slots where a missed day can break a career; art runs on a horizon of decades where he sets the pace. He argues the NFT world is jaded because it crowns blue chip artists six months after a Genesis drop, when in the larger art world every NFT native artist is still effectively an amateur. Money made in NFTs, he says, guarantees nothing but the opportunity to have a career, so he declines most platform invitations (many of the projects that ask are gone two months later) and keeps working quietly on things that will still matter in five or ten years.
The back half is looser and warmer: the story of his No Time to Burn handle (taken from a Black Heat record), his history as a competitive dancer and how finding a dance style taught him how style forms, a tour of favorite vinyl from Bill Evans to Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Easter eggs hidden in his work, including a commissioned CryptoPunk rendition and squiggle interpretations made with Snowfro's blessing. He closes by describing his whole body of work as a phone call: the art talks to the viewer so he does not have to, and the point is what the viewer sees of their own life in it.
What this episode teaches
- Make the work a mirror
Grant keeps his subject matter grounded in realism but ambiguous enough that a Californian and a lifelong Wisconsinite can both read their own childhood into the same Midwest piece. The intention behind a work belongs to the artist; the value comes from what viewers reflect back.
- Run two careers on two clocks
Medicine and art coexist because they operate on different time horizons. Medicine has rigid external deadlines measured in minutes and exam dates; art careers are built over decades at a pace the artist dictates. Compatibility comes from the difference, not despite it.
- Everyone in NFTs is still early
Grant argues no NFT native artist has even reached mid-career status, so calling a six month old project blue chip is a symptom of a jaded, accelerated market. Plan against the longer clock of art history, not the timeline.
- NFT money buys opportunity, not a career
Sales give financial freedom and the possibility of an art career, nothing more. With no infrastructure for artists, most may not see a paycheck next year, himself included, so he treats current success as a stake to gamble carefully rather than proof of arrival.
- Decline fast, build slow
People constantly ask Grant to join platforms and projects; he declines most, and often finds the project dead two months later. The balance is staying visible enough to remain relevant while quietly building work that is genuine to your vision.
- AI artists win on curation
Grant tried AI as a starting point and dropped it within a week, but he argues the success of AI artists will come down to how well they curate their own outputs into compelling, composed collections, citing Life in West America as the best example he has seen.
- On chain is one factor, not the whole story
As someone who creates mostly off chain, Grant respects fully on chain generative art but pushes back on treating it as the only thing that matters. Historical provenance and other qualities also make an NFT important.
- Style comes from building up and breaking down
Dance taught him that you can study every tutorial and idol, but a style unique to you only arrives through years of humbling yourself, accepting what you are good and bad at, and rebuilding. He applies the same lesson to art.
The conversation, topic by topic
What collectors should know
Nothing, by design. Grant wants collectors to find a reason beyond monetary gain, and he has no problem with traders, but the work is intentionally vague in subject so people all over the world can relate it to their own lives.
The physical wall tour
Grant points out a signed Shepard Fairey print from the Obey site, an Avant Arte drop with Tom Sachs, a Josef Albers print from an Artsy auction, a signed print by a contemporary artist whose name he admits to butchering, his own first Avant Arte drop En Route (his artist proof), the Midwest piece on a digital frame after it sold at Christie's over the summer, the Daniel Arsham clock made with IKEA, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, and a 6529 era NFT on a token frame.
Digital collecting
He loves his Chromie Squiggles and long form generative art, and holds several early Art Blocks pieces from the factory and presents era before the curated switch. The rest of his collection is work by artists who inspire him in the space.
Curating a neighborhood
Asked who he would curate, Grant points to a recent commission where he picked five or six artists across generative art, illustration, AI and photography to make work around the concept of a neighborhood. He wants to curate generative artists someday but says he needs more time and growth to earn that.
Why he will not make dynamic NFTs
6529 opened his eyes to dynamic NFTs in early 2021, but Grant wants his work printed and hung with light shining on it, not backlit on a screen behind his shoulder. He says no to dynamic work for himself while staying open to a collaboration that required it.
Collaborations that mattered
Two highlights: the on chain generative drop Primera with Andrew Mitchell, a friend from before crypto whom Grant helped onboard, and his editions with Avant Arte, whom he calls the gold standard of printmaking with real access to experts in the field.
Doctor by day
Medicine is an academic ladder of standardized exams, applications, grants and fifteen minute patient slots, where things as literal as chest compressions decide if someone lives. Art has deadlines too, but nothing that makes or breaks him in a day. MLow connects this to another doctor artist he interviewed who described the same split.
AI and curation
Grant used AI briefly as a reference starting point and did not enjoy it. He argues the strongest AI work he sees on Twitter is juxtaposed into themed collections, and that AI artists will rise or fall as curators of their own outputs, naming Life in West America as a model.
No Time to Burn
His Instagram handle came from a record he owns, No Time to Burn by Black Heat, chosen because he loved handles like Roller Skating Jam. People now assume it means he has no time to waste; he says the real origin was just a great record name he will never give up, like a good ENS.
Dancing
Grant started dancing in middle school, competed through college in the Midwest, and spent years finding a style unique to himself. He compares it directly to painting: tutorials teach technique, but style requires building up and breaking yourself back down.
The record shelf
He pulls Portrait in Jazz by Bill Evans, Wave by Antonio Carlos Jobim, the Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan session record, Dark Side of the Moon and Al Green's Greatest Hits. He says people who really know jazz are like people who really know contemporary art, the depth of knowledge he aspires to, and calls the King and Vaughan jam art at its purest form. A Beeple studio event where papers fell from the ceiling as Pink Floyd played converted his fiancee to Wish You Were Here.
Easter eggs
Sausalito hides a pair of glasses. The cowboy piece is a commissioned rendition of the collector Bayland's CryptoPunk, and the same collector owns Space in Primary, an astronaut stamped with the Ethereum logo. His squiggle renditions are made with Snowfro's blessing and arrive slowly, as commissions and the right squiggle come along.
Commercial success versus integrity
The space expects fast returns, daily updates and constant relevance; Grant does not envy PFP founders. His balance is engaging with the community without needing to sell every week, while building projects in the background so that in five or ten years he has something genuine to show, not a laundry list of dead partnerships.
Art as a phone call
Grant describes his whole body of work as talking to the viewer without being present: Midwest reflects his move from California to Wisconsin, but a collector's viral post about the Christie's piece, connecting it to where he grew up and a family tragedy, was exactly what the work is meant to do, serve as a mirror for someone else's life.
In their words
“In the bigger art world, relatively speaking, everyone in NFTs is basically an amateur. No one's even hit mid-career status.”
Grant Yun“The success of a lot of AI artists will come down to how well they are as curators of their own outputs.”
Grant Yun“They just go off and play whatever they feel. I think that's honestly art at its purest form, just creating impromptu, how you feel.”
Grant Yun“Just because you make a lot of money in NFTs doesn't necessarily guarantee you anything in your career as an artist.”
Grant Yun“Use my art the same way you would use a phone call to talk to me. It's really just a form of communication.”
Grant YunCite this conversation
Grant Yun in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Grant Yun," The MLow Show, 30 Aug 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-08-30-mlow-x-grant-yun.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.