There is a rare moment in an artist’s life...

It’s not when your work reaches a high price at auction. It’s not when your name appears on some list. It’s that quiet instant when someone with no obligation looks at what you’ve created and says, with their own wallet: I believe in you.

That is what Ether-Man is about.

In 2021, I released my first edition on Ethereum. Ten units. I did in celebration on my first 10 artworks sold on SuperRare. All collectors received for free. A way of saying: you were here when this was still just an idea.

One character with their heads down. In the back of him, another, wearing a "blue cape", looking toward the horizon, as if he knows exactly where he’s going, with his hands placed behind the first figure. Discreet. Present. Holding without taking over. Both with ETH logo on it, living "inside" the blockchain.

That is the collector.

Instead of acquiring it like do with a liquid token on pump.fun or dexscreener. But the one who arrives before the fame, before the certainty, before any concrete proof that any of it will mean something. He shows up when the artist is still upside down, trying to understand the world, trying to find himself in the digital language and places his hands on his back. Not pushing. Not directing. Just holding.

The first person I felt that way was Ben.

At that time, I was beginning to understand English through writing, translating Twitter posts on google, trying to decode not just the language, but an entire world that was opening up in front of me. And it was in that state, that we had our first exchanges. I dmed him and asked him if he would like to read about my stuffs.

I wanted to understand the collector’s point of view. What made someone look at the work of an unknown artist and decide to carry it? What goes through the mind of someone who chooses to support before having any guarantee?

Ben answered all those questions and more. With time, with willingness, with good intention... That was who he was in that moment: present, genuinely excited about what was happening. He was someone who truly believed on cryptoart (and continue to so, taking from recent tweets) that moment mattered and put effort back in. Not many artists and collectors seems to understand how important is to talk on what you truly care and have passion to. That's also why I'm telling all these stories and being open about it all.

Me on the other side of the world, translating every sentence, trying to express myself in a language I was still learning, were so much more than a conversation about art. Ben also was the first person I talked in english in person.

Ether-Man carries Ben’s spirit on its back. He may not know it in these exact words, but that is how I also see it.

When I first got in CryptoArt around Sept 2020 most collectors I met were genuinely *really* well-intentioned. They thought mostly long-term. They were enthusiastic, but not about prices, but about the possibility itself. Digital artists creating on their own terms, without permission, without intermediaries, without a gallery deciding who deserved to exist. And collectors being able to support a career directly, with the work going from one wallet to another.

It was a new kind of relationship, pretty different from the art market standards. And it was in that context that many collectors became part of my journey in ways that go far beyond what most people imagine. They didn't buy artworks. They bought the possibility of me continuing to do what I do at maximum. And I'm forever grateful about it all.

Some relationships begin in the digital space and slowly grow into something that takes up real, physical room in your life.

That’s what happened with Dino and Ambar, and their gallery Silk Art House.

They came not only as collectors, but as partners, people who looked at the work and saw what it could become in a space, on walls, in front of an audience that had never encountered it before. When they offered me the opportunity to hold my first solo exhibition outside Brazil, in Bali, I didn’t fully have the words to describe what that meant. I still don’t, not entirely.

We showed ten works from the Stories on Circles series, pieces about the daily stories that repeat themselves across the world, cycling endlessly through different lives, different places, different languages. The same grief. The same joy. The same quiet moments happening to someone, somewhere, right now.
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We also showed a ring project I have build past years but didn't really released it (not yet...)

And there I was, in Bali, speaking about all of this, in another language.

A few years ago, I didn’t know how to formulate a simple phrase in english. I learned it through tweets, through messages to collectors, through the slow and humbling process of reaching across a barrier and hoping the other side could still feel what I was trying to say. And somehow, in that room in Bali, the words came. Not perfectly, they never do, and nothing will ever replace my own language when it comes to feelings, to the things that are less direct and less objective. Portuguese still holds those parts of me that English can’t quite reach.

But I spoke. And people listened.

That would not have been possible without the path that started with Ben, and continued with Dino and Ambar, and with every collector who chose to be part of this story, believing, exchanging, sharing, etc.

Ether-Man was born on a shared OpenSea contract. But from the beginning, I wanted it to have a more permanent home. That’s why I created the burn and redeem option: the collector can burn the original version and redeem it on my own official contract (built on Manifold), one that I plan to will keep minting most of my editions. The burn and redeem is manually btw.

It means that this work doesn’t belong to a contract owned by an platform. It belongs to a relationship. And that relationship has a name, a history, and an intention. The collector who redeems is choosing, once again, to believe. This time in something even more personal: in the continuity of my work, in my presence as an artist across time.
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But of course, I understand those who wants to keep the original edition as intact idea. I even collected one back in the first shared OS collection. A time Manifold wasn't here.

In 2024, my first mint was Ether-Man 2, on my main edition's contract. The second part of a story that only makes sense when you understand the first. A new chapter.
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Like any real story, not everyone who appears in the early pages is still around by the middle of the book. That doesn’t make their presence any less true. If anything, it makes it more.

McCluskey holds one of the works I consider among my most important: Late Night Love. He collected several pieces of mine and was, for a while, one of those presences that make you feel the work is finding the right hands. I don’t know what drew him away from this space. I don’t need to. What I know is that his chapter in this story is real, on-chain. Permanent.

And then there is DeFi Kublai.

He holds King-Kong, a work about Ethereum being the greatest blockchain for innovation and digital art. He has many limited editions of mine too. But what stays with me isn’t just the collection.

His profile picture on Twitter is still "King-Kong". His last tweet was a retweet of mine. And his bio reads: “metaverse entity.”
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​I don’t know if that was a goodbye. I hope it wasn’t. I hope it was just him stepping back for a while, finding other rhythms, other ways of existing... That somewhere out there, he is well. But if it was a farewell to this space, it was the most poetic one I’ve ever witnessed. He left with my art as his pfp, my words as his last public act, and a biography that sounds like something written of a world he once loved deeply. He also owns "Ether-Man", as King-Kong is part of my first 10 artworks sold on SuperRare.

Maybe he was just following his own advice.

I miss talking to them. I miss their enthusiasm for what we were all building together.

This is the nature of what we have here. Some people were essential to this story and are no longer around to know it. Some are still here, quietly carrying the work forward. And some haven’t arrived yet... but they will, and when they do, they’ll inherit a culture that was built by people like these. The first buys got me able to buy a iPad and realize many dreams, but mainly, having time to create and look to my works.

The Ether-Man was never just a character in an artwork. It was always a portrait of this relationship. The one who creates, and the one who supports it.

That is the record. That is the part that doesn’t disappear.

For centuries, artists depended on people who saw them before the market did. Patrons who funded not artworks, but visions. Who bet on the artist as a human being, not just on the piece as a product. The blockchain made it available every corner of the world with access to internet.

The crypto art space would not exist without the artists, but without the collectors, we would never have had access, attention, or the means to keep going. We need the creators and we need the enthusiasts who support them. And crypto art made that space open to anyone willing to learn, anyone who carries a larger principle inside them, something beyond speculation.

That is what keeps us alive.

This relationship between those who create and those who believe and enjoy. Recorded permanently, transparently, and irreversibly on a chain that does not forget.

I won’t pretend things are easy right now.

The crypto art space is going through one of its hardest seasons since 2021. Prices have dropped. Collectors who once moved with energy and intention have quietly stepped back... or left entirely. Artists who were creating with fire have shifted to other things, drawn toward whatever feels more certain, more immediate, more rewarding right now. I understand all of it.

But I also believe, maybe naively, that what we built here is something worth protecting. Not the market. Not the floor prices. Not the hype. The culture. The actual artistic movement that emerged when digital artists, for the first time, had a way to exist on their own terms. To own their work. To be supported directly by people who cared.

That is a culture. And cultures don’t survive neglect.

They survive because someone stays. Because someone keeps creating even when the room gets quiet. Because a collector holds on out of genuine belief that the work matters beyond the moment the market is having.

The collectors who stayed through the noise, they are the ones writing the next chapter of this story. And the artists who keep showing up, keep making, keep sharing their vision even when it feels like no one is watching: they are the reason this space has anything worth preserving at all.

If crypto art is going to survive as a cultural movement, and I believe it can, and that it should, it will be because enough of us chose to treat it as one. as a place where human beings made something real, together, across languages and borders and time zones, on a ledger that does not forget.

That is the culture. That is what I’m here for.

— omentejovem