This is a guest post from JOY, who is hosting an auction on the Versus platform on 12/2.

John Orion Young (JOY) is a fourth generation artist and sculptor exploring new ways of creating, distributing, and experiencing art through the innovative technologies of AR, VR, and blockchain.

Son of a wildlife biologist turned artist, JOY was classically trained through childhood as a painter and sculptor in the techniques of oil painting and lost-wax bronze casting, creating wax sculptures of animals to anatomical correctness, and melting them down if they were inaccurate. JOY felt that it was the artist’s duty to be a mirror for the existing beauty of earth.

Art is the people, places, and things you know. When a friend showed a book of Salavador Dali’s artworks to JOY at an early age, his eyes were widely opened to a greater knowing of what art could really be. This event sent JOY on a deep trip painting, drawing, and creating thousands of artworks.

Filling every living space to the brim with art, JOY set out to create an art gallery with some artist friends. They called it the FU collective and placed it in the center of Denver Colorado’s main art district. On weekends JOY would host art openings in the space, meet with collectors, and sell artworks to them. During the week, JOY would create new artworks for the next weekend show. All of this shuffling around of physical objects had JOY yearning for a less wasteful approach to creating art. There had to be a way to create infinite amounts of art and have these fun experiences with collectors without needing to store, transport, and over time lose track of where the artworks all went.

Through time and a number of events for another story, JOY found himself in San Francisco. It was 2016 and he was watching a YouTube video showing someone creating a giant red spider in an Oculus Virtual Reality headset. There was this wonderful feeling of "WOW! You could make anything at any scale and all you needed was a computer and goggles." JOY set out to build a little yellow PC and acquire an Oculus Rift headset. This is where JOY really got lost and found JOYWORLD. Somewhere far out in TiltBrush, then even further out in Oculus Medium. 

In late 2017 JOY became obsessed with CryptoKitties. This was it! The way to enable collectors to own the virtual artworks he had been creating. JOY set out to build a new type of contract for artists to sell their art directly to collectors. The bulk of the contract was lifted from the CryptoKitties contract but with a few parts modified to enable collectors to steal each other's JOYs if they were willing to pay more than the previous collector, adding a bit more intensity to the collecting experience. This contract was minted April 24th and to our knowledge, makes JOY the first artist to create a NFT contract to sell their own art. JOYs are also the first 3D artworks on the blockchain.

Through this whole journey JOY has been creating JOYWORLD, an immersive metaverse experience to make you feel JOYful and creative. This will be the place to experience JOY, JOYs, JOYtoys, and fellow JOY Collectors. 

Through the process of bringing JOYs to earth, JOY has been thinking a lot about where these JOYs come from and how they travel between earth and JOYWORLD. As multidimensional beings, JOYs love to jump through portals, but portals are elusive, swift, and mysterious. We sometimes know where these portals happen but it is always known after the event. It wasn't until the newest JOY “The Persistence of Time” and their JOYtoy “InterJOYmentional Blotter” appeared that we were granted the ability to travel through time and capture photos of these JOYWORLD Portals.

The JOYWORLD Portal series is the newest collection of photographic artworks from JOY. In an attempt to capture these beautiful flashes in time where the JOYs enter our earth plane, JOY drops a single blotter on his tongue and jumps through time to capture an image of himself next to the portal for scale.

These images of portals are being intentionally made available across the entire metaverse agnostic of any chain to share these delightful moments of JOY that are sometimes fleeting but forever affecting our wellbeing. They are like a postcard from a dimension between dimensions. These images are created to celebrate how big, great, wildly, wonderful, and JOYful every fleeting moment in your life can be.

On December 2nd, from 8am-12pm ET the first portal photograph “JOYWORLD Portal, Sandstone Headland” will be auctioned off through the Versus platform! This auction will follow the standard Versus auction format of unique versus editions. 

In this auction format bids can be placed on either the unique side (/1) or on any serial number from the edition side (/11). The bid on the unique side is then compared to the cumulative bid on the edition side and whichever is larger wins! The respective number of NFTs are then minted and sent to the winning bidder(s).

Who will get the first JOYWORLD Portal? 1 JOY Collector or 11 JOY Collectors?

Find out on December 2nd from 8am-12pm ET!