THE MOTION ART JOURNAL: LORNA MILLS, OG CRYPTO ARTIST

JANUARY 13TH, 2022

The NFT space loves to throw around the term OG. Many artists state proudly that they did this or that first, referring to something that was created maybe three or four years ago. While it may be true that they were among the first to *mint* something on a specific platform, when it comes to creating art for the digital space with a specific digital aesthetic, many other artists can claim the title of OG. Lorna Mills is one of those artists.

Lorna Mills has been creating and exhibiting digital work since the early 1990s, back when Netscape was the dominant browser and it could take an hour to download one 3MB file. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Thoma Foundation, The Sandor Collection, Museum of the Moving Image & EQ Bank. Her work was shown in Times Square before any of the current generations of crypto/NFT artists. She is now selling her work on Hic et Nunc (or whatever it will be called soon) as she continues to exhibit her work around the world. In other words, she is a real OG.

Lorna Mills comes from a lineage of artists of a certain age (I am one of them) that was influenced by experimental film. She went on to create her own type of experimental film or work that then blended into Net Art when the web got big. It culminated in the Tumblr-Gif-Art culture from 2009-2015 and flourished until Instagram killed it, or at least knocked it off the perch of being the place where almost all artists went to display their work.

The aesthetics of Lorna Mills’ work fits squarely in the context of Gif Culture as it has evolved through the 90s and into Tumblr culture up to today, where it remains a potent force. The aesthetics of many star NFT artists like XCOPY, Robness and others come directly out of this tradition. She continues to work in the GIF format saying, “I get irritated when the animated GIF is described as an obsolete format, it’s actually quite a successful format.” Her images are deliberately low-res, the imagery is usually somewhat vulgar and her gifs animate with jagged looping motion that is essential to their impact. These works are alive, and looking at them is like being slapped in the face.

Lorna was kind enough to answer some questions from me.

What do you think of the NFT movement? An art revolution? Something else?

Well I seem to have embedded myself in it for now, but I take the position that it could end tomorrow. The tezos blockchain has provided something special to artists working on Hic et Nunc. It's an interesting vehicle and I've discovered so many brilliant artists because of it. I am one of the lucky ones because I've had some career success before joining the party, so I was aware of a lot of the artists joining the space, mostly because I've worked on projects with many of them. Looking back, I recognize that there were so few venues for digital artists, plus gallerists who do support digital art have limited resources. They aren't necessarily "gatekeepers", there were just so few of them, and shows can be damn expensive to mount. So my answer is "something else" and I'm curious to see what happens next.

What do you want people to feel when they see your NFTs?

I want to surprise and confound, as that is an experience I like when viewing other artists' work. On occasion my work is vulgar, but it's due to my sense of the ridiculous. I revel in the extremes of online expression but I also revel in raving formality. That is generally something that unfolds later on to a viewer of my work.

Lorna Mills’ opinions are as bold as her artwork. I, of course, think there is something new about Motion Art but what I do agree with Lorna about is we don’t yet know because it is all so new. That is what is exciting about this time – it is a new adventure and none of us know what things will look like in a few years.