Preview: Art Blocks 'QWERTY' by Tara Donovan

Art Blocks is back today and looking to build on the momentum from the past few weeks, as Tara Donovan launches her first-ever NFT project "QWERTY."

Since their partnership began, this is the second collaboration project between Art Blocks and the Pace Gallery, whose intention is to bring more traditional artists to the generative art and digital art space. The first collaboration was "Petro National" by John Gerrard, which holds a 3.9 ETH floor and saw widespread acclaim from the Art Blocks collector base.

Who Is Tara Donovan?

For quick background on Tara, she traditionally has focused on physical art, spanning sculpture, installation, drawing, and printmaking. Her style uses "everyday objects to explore the transformative effects of accumulation and aggregation." She has been featured in several museums across the US, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland and San Diego, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Tara is sticking with her aggregation tactics from her physical work for QWERTY, using the letters of the alphabet and 30 other symbols to create "rhythmic, mesmeric arrangements" as the outputs. The results of these combinations of simple letters and symbols include "subtle, minimalist grids; architectural forms; psychedelic motifs; and optical illusions." Find some sample outputs here, to get a better sense of these combinations.

QWERTY Market Analysis

The dutch auction for the 500-supply QWERTY set begins today at 12 p.m. ET, starting at a 5 ETH price and decreasing exponentially to a final resting price of 0.15 ETH.

Given Tara's stature as an accomplished artist and recent tailwinds in Art Blocks, this is likely to mint out higher than recent sets, perhaps around the 0.75-1 ETH mark or higher. The first Pace Gallery collab saw additional liquidity come in outside the typical Art Blocks collector base, and QWERTY likely will as well. Friday's mint, "Rectangles," was a huge gas war, so attention is definitely back on Art Blocks' mints, which means more flippers and botters.

If this one sneaks under the radar somehow and is not heavily minted by flippers, it becomes an attractive mint. If it mints out above 1 ETH, it's riskier, especially as we have seen recent runners like Fontana fall back to earth after big initial runs (it's down ~40+ percent from local highs). Regardless, expect it to be one of the higher liquidity draws of the day, with a relatively quiet slate of new drops to start this week.