Artist Interviews 2022

Jon Planas  



Iconic Artist Jon Planas Enters the NFT World

Peruvian-born artist Jon Planas began making a splash in the art world in 1980s in New York, at a time when the grit and grime of the Lower East side were were all the rage. Living in a small apartment there, the artist said that he was so poor he began buying paint with what he could afford; and because he loved fashion, he figured why not use that as a wearable canvas for his work. Soon before he knew it, the starving artist’s work was now being purchased by the likes of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, unarguably the “it girls” of music at the time. While that’s where Planas made a name for himself, that’s nowhere near where his art has stopped.



Today, many years later the artist is still vigorously pursuing his passion, creating images of color, imagination and fantastical. Living in LA currently, unlike many artists who might be afraid to enter a new realm, Planas is invigorated by this new wave of creation and diving headfirst into the NFT realm. “My initial reaction when I heard about NFTS was one of excitement. I saw that the future of art exhibition was going to be the metaverse. It's incredible to see the technology behind these new forms of art. It also undermines the regular Gallery system, which has become a very privileged and somewhat elitist venue in my opinion,” Planas says. He also notes that it harkens him back to a time when he first started putting his work on jackets. A canvas is a canvas, so to speak. He notes, “I love artists that can paint on any surface–as a matter of fact that's what I was doing in New York City when I was creating my jackets. I was throwing paint on anything I could.”





From hand-painted jackets to NFTS, for Jon Planas, it looks like history repeats itself and he’s just fine with that.