Amber Vittoria is an artist, poet, and author working in Los Angeles, California. Through abstracted form, ribbons of color, and joyous words, her work represents the “nuances of emotion, beauty, and nostalgia.” In January 2023, Vittoria released a book of paintings and poems, published with Andrews McMeel.

Vittoria has several sold-out collections, is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Recipient, One Club Young Gun, Society of Illustrators Gold Medalist, American Illustration Chosen Winner, AOI World Illustration Overall Winner, and ADC Annual Award Winner. Her work has been recognized by outlets like HuffPost, Teen Vogue, and more. Some of her past clients include Facebook, Warby Parker, Apple, The New York Times, NBC, Google, Gucci, Condé Nast, Adidas, and Snapchat.

On Friday, January 12, 2024, Vittoria is dropping her newest collection, Vibes, available on OpenSea. Vibes is a collection of 300 abstract, pixelated artworks. A statement from the artist reads, “Each Vibe is a vibrant ode to the multifaceted nature of human emotion. There are no additional functionalities or utilities attached to these artworks; their purpose lies in their ability to evoke and resonate. In celebration of the universal language of emotion, no rarity traits have been assigned to these Vibes. Each piece stands as an equal testament to the artistic vision, ensuring every emotion and expression is valued just the same.”

The Vibes mint starts January 12 at 11:00 AM HST.

OpenSea: Can you tell us about your artistic background and how you first entered the world of web3 and NFTs?

Amber Vittoria: I went to Boston University's College of Fine Arts and there I studied graphic design. At the time, graphic design was a little bit more open-ended where you didn't have to pick a specific medium, the other majors, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. I was 18 and I wasn't really sure what type of artist I wanted to be, so graphic design was all encompassing. 

When I graduated, I worked full-time in-house and at agencies. I worked at Victoria's Secret, VaynerMedia and Avon. In my free time, I would find freelance clients and make artwork and illustrations for clients. It got to a point where I was able to quit my full-time job and start working for myself full-time, which was about a little over six years ago. My earlier work was a bit more figurative and then over time it became more abstract, which is very common for most abstract artists. A lot of the themes in my earlier works spoke to womanhood and my experience of being a woman in this world and over time it's evolved to speaking more about the emotional aspects of being a woman and emotional aspects of just kind of being a human being. It's been really lovely to kind of see that work transition with time. 

I learned about web3 and crypto around 2017 when I started freelancing. I put a very small dollar amount into Bitcoin and Ethereum and let it sit and forgot about it. I really loved the fact that blockchain technology had the promise of being life-changing in terms of wills, medical information, the transfer of information and money very quickly, and knowing that it would be true and solidified. I didn't think it would be life-changing for me only a few years later. 

I learned about NFTs in early 2021 through my husband and a few of his friends. They were really obsessed with CryptoPunks. And then from there, I started to follow a lot of artists that were selling their work on-chain, and I figured why not give it a whirl. The first few times I minted and sold my work, it was really expensive which was kind of prohibitive for me in the pandemic of being a freelancer. Then I learned about what OpenSea used to have, Lazy Minting, and that's really when everything started to change for me…because I was like, worst case scenario if I can't sell these pieces at least it's just a cost of my time and not the cost of hundreds of dollars to mint. That's when I started to really put my work on chain and that was summer of 2021. So it's been a really, really incredible ride since. 

OpenSea: Who or what are your biggest inspirations and influences when you start to think about creating a new collection?

Amber Vittoria: The base influence is I think nature and the majority of my color palettes come from nature and going to different national parks, state parks, and preserves. I would definitely say that's number one and the second is just lived experience, whether it's my own experience or those of people close to me. I would say more recently my work plays a lot with balance and that's something that I struggle with. I get vestibular migraines, which throw you off balance quite literally, so I do think that has slowly started to seep into my work. The idea of balance is not only for me physically, but also metaphorically. I think a lot of people can relate to trying to find a balance within life, especially in the United States, of balancing work and personal life. That's definitely been a more recent influence in a lot of my abstract pieces, too.

OpenSea: What is the inspiration behind your new collection, Vibes? We noticed in your tweet thread that you said this would be pure art, no “utility.” Do you think NFT art is moving back in this direction?

Amber Vittoria: In early 2023 I was chatting with a toy maker, and I wanted to do an abstract toy. I didn't really know what that meant and they were like, when you have an idea, let us know. So, I started to sketch really abstract forms. I thought, what would they be? Because my work is very much about emotion and celebrating all different aspects of emotion, whether it’s happy or sad or whatever kind of runs the gamut. The word I use the most, which is very Millennial of me, is “vibes.” There's a joke my husband and I have. Before we moved to Los Angeles we were visiting LA and then we went up to San Francisco and the temperature change was huge, it was really windy and gloomy and I was like, “The vibes off.” Vibe is a word that's probably overused in my vocabulary. So as I was drawing these abstract toys, I thought I should just call them Vibes. 

The nice thing is when you make a vinyl toy, you pay for the mold, but you can skin it in different colors and different patterns which saves money. Unfortunately, it was quite expensive even with that approach, so I just kind of kept a little abstract sketch in my sketchbook and didn't do much with it. Then a few months ago, we were visiting Dry Tortugas National Park. I had some downtime with no internet and that Vibes collection came back to mind. I thought, “I wonder what these would look like digitally,” so I started to play around with that idea. Maybe if these do okay, I can make toys one day but if not, at least I got this idea out of my sketchbook and into the world. So I started to play with pixelated imagery, it reminds me a lot of the stacking of my abstract work and leaning back into some of my older figurative work. 

I wanted them to feel human in a way, even though they were abstract, so people could relate to them. I started making a few of them and I was like these are Vibes, pun intended. I started to share them on X and people really resonated with them, so I thought maybe I'll do a small collection.

When [I posted it], people started to be like my god, that's gonna be the best PFP project. I was like, no, that's not what it is, so when I decided to make this a collection of NFTs, I really wanted to put them out as art and kind of see how they do that way. I think that's why it's a collection of 300 and not like 3,000 or 10,000 and they're also all made individually. I went to Photoshop and made them all one by one. That's important to me. 

But to answer your question of whether or not I think that NFTs are going back in that direction, I think that we'll still see companies creating NFTs, or what we call “projects.” I do think a lot of people have learned from the last few years that maybe a community that has 10,000 NFTs might be too big and too tough to manage, especially the expectations, wants, and desires of folks within that community. So I do think that if it's something that's artist-driven, it’ll most likely be artwork for artwork's sake with no other utility or ideas layered into it. I like to be clear that everything that I've ever sold on-chain is artwork.

I feel for folks who run NFT projects because I feel like the expectation for them was set so high and in such a short amount of time. That's why I do think a lot of NFTs that are coming out are more art-focused because we exchanged art for crypto. I've seen that trend a little bit more which makes me happy because it's always nice to see artists be able to put out their collections into the world on their own without help from brands or anything like that.

OpenSea: Who or what else excites you in the web3 and NFT space right now?

Amber Vittoria: Layer 2s and other chains starting to come into play is really exciting. And I think with things like gas fees and transaction fees, it could still be a little prohibitive to people to join the web3 space, so it's nice to see people trying to solve that. 

I just saw OpenSea share a way to sign up for a wallet with just an email address. That's awesome. I think accessibility is something that excites me because a lot of folks who collect my art that aren't in web3 or NFTs see me do something digital, and they're like, “That's really cool, but what's a Metamask?” It's super overwhelming to figure out how to open a wallet, but then also to get money into that wallet, and then a lot of credit card solutions are a little bit clunky. I think what OpenSea has done where you could just sign up with an email address is definitely a first step for a lot of folks to just make it easier. 

I always compare it to credit cards. I remember when I was younger, you would never buy anything online with a credit card. So I think that we're in the early stages of that with crypto. Really what excites me is the fact that this whole space has encouraged everyone to collect artwork. People think that collecting artwork is for people that are super rich or super well off and it's like no, you can collect artwork from an artist that you love and can afford because of this technology and I think that’s encouraging and exciting.

OpenSea: As the NFT and web3 ecosystem continues to evolve, what developments or trends are you most excited about, and how do you see them shaping the future of web3 art?

Amber Vittoria: I think the biggest one is just accessibility for people. It’s similar to how the internet took the world by storm, we saw that social media was an evolution of dot-com and web3 is now an evolution of social media, which is always really exciting. I think what’s tough for folks right now is that there are a lot of technological hurdles. For example, not really understanding the lingo or not understanding different crypto coins — how they work or how to buy something with them. 

I think advancements that make that a lot easier are really exciting. Signing up with email is a great example, Layer 2s eliminate transaction fees, you're not paying money for something and then you might not get it, because that’s a bizarre user experience. I think Layer 2s are starting to solve that. Even other chains like Solana and Tezos eliminate some of the hurdles that you see with Ethereum and Bitcoin. It's been exciting to see people innovate and experiment. Will all of it survive? No, probably not but I think it allows us to think in ways that are a bit different and allows us to say okay this is cool and innovative but it's still a little clunky, what can we do to make it more streamlined for people? That's what always excites me.

OpenSea:  Is there anything about your new collection that launches on Friday that you want people to know about, that we haven't talked about yet?

Amber Vittoria: Yeah, the collection doesn't have any rarity set to it. That was important because these Vibes aim to speak to a bunch of different emotions that we may have and it's been fun to see people insert themselves and their life experiences into some of the ones I've shared, which I love. It'll be fun to see organically which pieces people resonate with and which ones people think are different or interesting. Some people gravitate towards certain emotions and certain times in their lives and other emotions in others and that's what I'm most excited about.