The Godfather of Street Art, Ron English is one of the most recognizable artists alive today, working across all mediums to bring his unique universe to mass consciousness.

1.What inspired you to become an artist?

I would say it happened when I was about four years old, I remember because I hadn't been in kindergarten yet. I was just playing with my friend in the backyard, and his older brother gave us some firecrackers. So we're probably way too young for firecrackers that were this strong, but we're out there blowing up the firecrackers.

And then, naturally, the police came out, (Laughs) my mom 's having a a nervous breakdown and yelling at me, and she locked me in my room and said, you have to stay in the room, like, for an hour. She showed me a clock, and for a little four year old, that's a long time. And so I sat down, and I had crayons, and I had a pile of paper that my dad had brought home...

So I started drawing on the paper with the crayons, and that was it. There was no chance I was stopping at the end of the hour, I refused to leave the room. because I didn't care about fire crackers anymore. I didn't care about anything except drawing with those crayons.

2. What was the first artwork you sold?

Okay, well, the first art piece I sold, I was 8 years old. I had an aunt who was an amateur artist, and she showed at the mall in central Illinois where we lived. And so she started taking my little paintings to the mall, and the first painting that she sold for me was st. Basis Cathedral, Russia, st. Petersburg.

She sold it to a college professor, and then the college professor would show it to her freshman class as an example for them to paint, and then the freshman class would say, well, we're just freshmen. Obviously, we can't paint that good yet. You can't expect us to paint that good yet. And then she would go, well, this artwork was made by an 8 year old. That's her little trick that she played on the students to get them to see whats possible.

3. What was the most meaningful piece you created?

I think the most meaningful piece for me was a project called the Rabbits. So it was a way for me to bring together stuff for my whole lifetime and then have it all exist in the same space and complete it with music. And art and animation and sort of run everything together.

When I was young, I went to see Pink Floyd in The Wall in LA. And then after that I couldn't make art. I came back and I just couldn't make art for months because I just thought it was spectacular. I could never made anything like that. It didn't occur to me that I was like 17, that I was obviously I'm not going to be able to make things like that. That takes a lifetime of experience. Roger Waters did that later in this career.

4. Share your experience creating the Clock.

With the clock, I kind of played with the idea of like, there's layers of the earth and each layer tells like, a different story.

And so I kind of created a layer of the earth that's made up of toys that were basically made to be disposable. Some of them I made and some of them like things I've collected. Painted Gold, in a three dimensional layered sculpture. But it's sort of the idea that these toys, like, preserve, like, a moment in time. Preserved in a moment.

Preserving examples of what we're thinking, like, say the dinosaur toys I had when I were a kid - those were inaccurate. They figured out since, that they were more like birds, so they wouldn't make a dinosaur toy to look like that anymore. But that tells the story of that moment in time.

And it's also, you know, my interest with toys was very intense, and I like toys, and I think all kids did. It was more part of your imagination. You didn't see the toy, but you imagined, like, a whole world for the toy. And then it's, like, goes on and on. Either you lose that imagination or you're able to actually build that out into the universe.

Clock includes this NFT and 90 minutes of visual video art featuring 50 artists captured by Benzi.