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Tyrone Webb was one of the first artists to embrace Spatial for a private personal gallery, having VR become a fundamental part of their art career. He has for many years been working as a spray paint artist creating futuristic landscapes. After a career at IBM for 14 years Tyrone dove into becoming an Artist full time. Tyrone Webb’s art career started in Colorado where he drew inspiration for his work from the mountains that surrounded him. He describes painting the Red Rocks but as if it was “300 million years in the future”. We love that Webb has always been a futurist, perhaps a trait that led him to explore Spatial. Webb was on the board of the Boulder Art Association before moving back to his hometown in Pennsylvania. He is currently a full time resident artist at the Banana Factory in Bethlehem. His work is bold and colorful, futuristic without an emphasis on technology, but rather on nature.
“As a culture, maybe even as a species, we have an inner desire to make a trip to 'somewhere'. Along the way you stop and admire a view. It has taken me a lot of time to realize why I paint the things I do. It's about the journey to the view. I paint what I have seen in my mind for everyone to see. Within each of my pieces is an inherent safety, despite the location seeming impossible or inhospitable” - Tyrone Webb, 2013
Webb found it was actually pretty simple to go from buying his first VR headset to creating his gallery. It is wonderfully enriching to have an artist in a space with you to talk about their art and give personal tours. Webb plans to continuously iterate on his gallery to make it a unique and interactive gallery experience. Him and his team are now rehearsing an immersive theatre experience they will begin performing in his gallery in the near future. We are so excited to see how they blend fine art and theatre in one virtual space!
In Spatial, Webb displays a blend of NFTs and not NFTs: “Any of the ones any of the ones that have frames on them are NFTs. The ones that don't have frames on them are not NFTs”. The works of his that are NFTS have interesting movement animations added to them, making them really compelling digital art assets. By clicking the information cards next to his NFTs on your desktop you can be taken to the sites where his work can be purchased.
Tyrone has already sold paintings from his gallery in Spatial and has gotten a commission from a patron. That success is “entirely from inviting somebody into the space and actually showing them my work.” He displays the work in Spatial much larger than they are in real life, but enhancing the size really makes an impact. Then of course he can always resize them to their original size. Spatial is another tool he has to help people see his artwork, whether or not clients have a VR headset. He has brought people through private gallery tours with them joined only from the Spatial web app on their browsers. Although, he does recommend people join from headset because the web is no substitute for the presence that can be achieved when everyone is in VR.
