Themes + Projects’ is thrilled to host Redefining the Creator Economy––a panel discussion on the impact that NFTs have on the art world from the perspective of an artist, an art consultant, a curator and an NFT Platform developer.

Join artist Camila Magrane, CreatoRanch Co-founder Chris Trueman, Art Consultant Claudia Hess, and curator Grant Vetter for an afternoon on how NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens) have taken the art and tech industries by storm.

Panelist

Claudia Hess

Art Consultant

Claudia W. Hess, MBA, AAA brings over 40 years of experience as an art historian, curator, entrepreneur, educator, gallery owner, and art collector to her role as CEO of Hess Art Advisory. She is also a Certified Member of the Appraisers Association of America and a veteran of countless blue-chip art fairs.

Camila Magrane

Artist

Camila Magrane is a multimedia artist from Caracas, Venezuela. Most recently, she's been exploring the involvement of technology and interactivity in art. She holds a B.S. in computer science with a concentration in game development and continues to hone her skills as a creative coder through the creation of interactive videos, installations, and games.

Chris Trueman

CreatoRanch Co-founder

Chris has worked between painting and digital media for 20 years. He double majored in Painting and Digital media at the San Francisco Art Institute and holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. In 2018, he was one of the early adopters of NFT technology. Since then, Chris has been invited to launch NFTs on curated platforms, such as Nifty Gateway, Makers Place, and Foundation App, and has explored the open platforms OpenSea, Rarible and Hie et nunc. He was recently one of the first artists to bring NFTs into the gallery space with his work WWMC5, displayed at Winston Wachter Fine Art in Seattle. Chris is part of a small handful of artists that has successfully navigated both the physical art world, as well as the digital NFTs.

CreatoRanch is a mobile NFT marketplace that was created with the express intention of removing the barriers which have kept mainstream creators from being able to access and fully utilize this groundbreaking technology.

Dr. Grant Vetter

Curator

Dr. Grant Vetter is the head curator of Fine Art Complex 1101 and Mesa Community College Art Gallery. In the past he has served as the Gallery Director for Arizona State University, Autonomie Arts and the Foundation for Art Resources. Today he teaches Art Theory, Art Criticism and Curatorial Studies at Arizona State University. His first book, The Architecture of Control (Zero Books, 2012) examined issues related to social control and technology and his forthcoming book, The Future(s) of Art and the Curatorial Generation, looks at what the discourse of the curatorial means in a world of user-generated content. Dr. Vetter completed his post-Doc work in the International Curators Program (ICP) at the NODE Center for curatorial studies in Berlin and holds advanced degrees from the European Graduate School (EGS), University of California, Irvine (UCI), the Critical Theory Institute (CTI) and the Art Center College of Design (ACCD).