19 Sep 2023/8 min/Jake Fried
MLow X Jake Fried
Hand drawn animator Jake Fried lays out the most disciplined release strategy in the archive, then walks through his process, his physicals, and the meaning of Open Eyes Flower.
MLow opens by asking about Jake Fried's latest mint, Open Eyes Flower, an edition of 20 plus three artist proofs sold alongside lenticular physical prints from Avant Arte, and Fried turns the answer into a masterclass on supply. Over two plus years he has released roughly eight 1/1s, one every four to six months, each taking about a year of daily redrawing to make. He explains why he launched with two editions of 30 plus a 1/1 to seed about forty collectors on day one, why he airdropped the Blue Moon edition to his earliest holders, why he refused the 2023 open edition wave (unknown supply was the disqualifier), and why he gated his edition of 100 to Night Vision holders, selling it out before the public ever saw it. His 1/1 The Deep End sits at AOTM with a reserve around 100 ETH, and he is happy to let work sit: one SuperRare piece waited nine months before selling for about 75 ETH.
The middle stretch ranges across the infrastructure of the space. Fried explains why AOTM's curated gallery is what he shows no-coiners instead of Twitter or Blur, how his Spatial gallery for Night Vision hosted a token gated launch party, and why the self serve autonomy of dropping on his own Manifold contract beats the traditional gallery model he came from. He is friendly with Transient Labs but wary of gimmicks, respectful of Jack Butcher's Checks and Sam Spratt's Monument Game while insisting his own work stays about the art, and cool on Ordinals: he sees the money there but calls it an overcomplication of his message, framing Bitcoin as digital gold and Ethereum as where his history already lives.
The last forty minutes go deep into craft. Fried draws and paints over the same sheet of paper with ink and white-out, photographing each state, no storyboards, straight ahead, then keeps the crusty finished sheets in a box as his retirement fund, refusing every offer to buy them. He is unthreatened by AI (it will hit stock photography and graphic design first, he says, not a hand drawn practice), argues friction and limitation are gifts to artists, and closes with a frame by frame reading of Open Eyes Flower: eyes, seasons, growth and decay, ending on the Buddhist parable of the flower held up as the answer, at which point MLow reveals his first curated collection was called fLOWers.
What this episode teaches
- Launch with editions, not a lone 1/1
Fried's first drop was two editions of 30 plus one 1/1, giving him about forty collectors on day one. Those collectors create buzz, advocate for the work, and give it secondary liquidity that a single 1/1 cannot.
- Pick a cadence and hold it
One 1/1 every four to six months, two or three a year, because each minute long piece takes about a year to make. He calls himself super paranoid about dropping anything ever, and treats that paranoia as the strategy.
- Reward holders before recruiting buyers
Blue Moon, an edition of 60, existed largely to airdrop a piece to every collector of his original editions and 1/1s. His edition of 100 sold out to Night Vision holders before the public sale opened. Loyalty compounds; dilution does not.
- Unknown supply is a dealbreaker
He skipped the early 2023 open edition wave despite the money because he would not know how many would be minted. Supply discipline mattered more than a windfall.
- Let the work sit at its price
A SuperRare piece stayed listed for nine months before selling for about 75 ETH, and The Deep End waits at AOTM at around 100 ETH. Patience at a known price is a strategy, not a failure signal, and he stays open to negotiation.
- A down market is a reason to wait
Fried says plainly that collectors lack disposable funds right now and there is nothing wrong with an artist considering that and choosing not to drop. Rare on the record permission to simply hold back.
- The raffle tells you demand before the drop
Avant Arte's raffle model (anyone signs up, winners drawn at random, credit card or crypto) let him know the piece had sold out and how much interest existed before it dropped, while filtering bots and flippers.
- Embrace the medium, never fake it
He tells his students the medium is the message: if you work with cut paper, emphasize cut paper. He keeps writing ink and white-out on paper on his posts because if people thought his hand drawn work was digital imitation, the work would lose what makes it real.
- Friction is fuel
Frustration, friction, and resistance are good for an artist, he argues; limiting your tools is valuable. The best AI artists, he says (naming Claire Silver), fight with the tool and rework endlessly rather than accepting its output.
- Do not overcomplicate the pitch
Most people he talks to cannot figure out MetaMask, so he resists layering new chains and contract tricks onto his work: it is digital art, tokenized, with provenance, viewable online. Keep it that simple for the collectors who are not here yet.
The conversation, topic by topic
Open Eyes Flower and the Avant Arte drop
His latest mint: an edition of 20 plus three artist proofs sold with lenticular physical prints from Avant Arte, made with Cosmo de Medici. The print carries eight frames of animation that move as you move; the digital piece loops the same lenticular motion. He hopes to show physical and digital side by side as one artwork tied together by the NFT's provenance, and notes Grant Yun also dropped with Avant Arte.
Release strategy, the full history
Two editions of 30 plus a 1/1 at entry, then SuperRare 1/1s every four to six months (about eight in two plus years), a Christie's auction with MAPS for psychedelic research, the Blue Moon airdrop edition of 60, a refusal of open editions, and an edition of 100 gated to holders of the 1,440 piece Night Vision series. Side projects (a Fake Rare, a Proof grail, a Deck of Degeneracy card) are kept tiny and used to reach new communities.
Pricing on the record
MLow asks the reserve outright: The Deep End sits at AOTM at about 100 ETH, matching his last 1/1 sale. Editions trade around 0.8 ETH on secondary. A SuperRare piece once sat nine months before selling for roughly 75 ETH, and Fried is comfortable with all of it.
AOTM and virtual galleries
Fried shows the AOTM site to people who ask what NFTs are because it looks like a real curated digital gallery, not a Twitter scroll or a chart. He joined through friends in the Fake Rare community, praises its editorials and curation, and earlier built a Night Vision gallery with Spatial that hosted a token gated launch party with collectors walking around as avatars.
Autonomy versus the traditional gallery
He dropped Blue Moon and New Life on his own Manifold contract, ran his own allowlist, and talks to collectors directly: no agent, no corporation taking a cut, no exclusivity. He contrasts this with traditional galleries (large commissions, private sales, work disappearing into homes) and argues the space solves exactly those problems while work stays publicly viewable.
Transient Labs, gimmicks, and dynamic contracts
He showed with Transient Labs' Outlier program at NFT NYC and loves the team, but avoids anything that feels like a gimmick with contracts or burns. MLow discloses he is curating a Transient project and praises Jack Butcher's Checks and Opepen and Patrick Amadon's Doppelganger contract; Fried answers that gamification can be the art for Jack, it is just not his lane, and imagines one day putting every aspect ratio variation of a piece on a single token.
Ordinals and the chain question
Fried sees real money and interest in Ordinals and people wanting him to inscribe to lend it status, but calls it an overcomplication of his message: small file sizes, poor display, more friction. Ethereum layer one already holds his history. Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum the smart chain, and both will feed the biggest rivalry of the next 50 years. MLow counters that Ordinals answer the IPFS objection and that recursion works around file limits, and both expect a chain agnostic future.
Digital identity and where this goes
Fried predicts art collections become a serious part of digital identity: assets tied to your official record, viewable on some future LinkedIn or X. COVID normalized living online and pushed the space forward; he expects more remote life and more screen time to keep pushing it, while serious digital art separates itself from the FTX era noise.
The process
Every piece is hand drawn by redrawing the same sheet: draw, photograph, paint over with ink and white-out, repeat, straight ahead with no storyboards. A five second loop is three or four months of work; a one minute 1/1 takes a year. He calls the results abstract narratives, closer to dance or poetry than storytelling, meant to be hypnotic and to do something to your psyche.
The physicals in the box
He holds up the actual paper stacks on camera: thick, crusty, crumbling sheets, one per film. He refuses every offer to buy them, calling them his retirement, and framed one (Brain Wave, still unminted) beside its film at a Boston gallery show. The work itself is scaleless: crisp at Times Square size or on an Infinite Objects frame.
AI, honestly
He played with DALL-E, Midjourney, and ChatGPT and his interest waned; the Barbie image he made for his mom's birthday took three minutes. He expects AI to threaten stock photography, mainstream graphic design, and short form ad work, not a hand drawn practice, and doubts AI can feel or reimagine work with a soul. He collected a glitchy StyleGAN Rembrandt in 2021 and finds early broken AI more interesting than photorealism, while questioning whether cleaning up your own words with ChatGPT trades away authenticity.
Symbols, Easter eggs, and the napkin
His work is dense by design: more information than one viewing can absorb, built for rewatching, descended from Escher and Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Symbols are personal objects from his desk and life. His current piece grew from folding napkins with his three year old daughter at breakfast: how many folds until paper becomes hard as a bullet, a drawing about ratios, gravity, and the nature of the universe.
Reading Open Eyes Flower
He walks the triptych eye by eye: the top a branching nest of eye berries in a transitional season, the bottom a hostile landscape (ocean floor, Mars, the surface of a cell) with one exposed pearl under precipitation, the center a macro eye holding an endlessly blooming flower, the ecstatic core. He lands on the Buddhist parable of the master answering the meaning of life by holding up a flower.
fLOWers and the closing exchange
MLow shares that his first curated Web3 collection was called fLOWers, which delights Fried, who used to teach museum tours built around the flower across art history. Fried closes by telling MLow the space needs great curators and that the interviews matter, since the narrative around the artist is what will hold value as AI floods the timeline.
In their words
“I'm super paranoid about dropping anything ever, and when I do, I want to make sure I really thought it out.”
Jake Fried“One of ones are kind of the most important thing you're putting out there, and should be kind of your highest end work.”
Jake Fried“I don't need a gallery, an agent, some big corporation to take a cut for me. I'm my best marketer.”
Jake Fried“Let's not overcomplicate it. It's digital art. Most people I talk to can't even figure out what MetaMask is.”
Jake Fried“Frustration and friction, resistance: these are all really good things for an artist.”
Jake Fried“Drawing is the act of really being alive.”
Jake FriedCite this conversation
Jake Fried in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Jake Fried," The MLow Show, 19 Sep 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-09-19-mlow-x-jake-fried.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.