Art from Streets to the Digital World
VIEW EVENT DETAILSArt for Breakfast Meets Startup Nation Japan
What is street art? You may know Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat who started their careers in this genre. Banksy is leaving his mark all over the world fetching record-breaking prices and art lovers have come to appreciate this art form. You see graffiti on the sides of buildings or tunnels. Is it art or is it something undesirable?
Serial entrepreneur and CEO of TOTEMO Marty Roberts launched this art startup during the pandemic when he used Tokyo graffiti as a teaching tool for his children’s art lessons. Being an art lover and seeing so many wonderful works in unexpected places, he was struck with the beauty of graffiti art. Graffiti as you can imagine is still a crime in Japan, and the art form is not permanent. Being an entrepreneur, he came up with ways to preserve the art, support the artists, and help collectors create a new ecosystem.
Please join us to learn about a groundbreaking new art start-up, the world of street art movement from serial entrepreneur, Marty Roberts, curator, Elena Calderon Alaez on how street art is evolving and get insights from the artists and creators making these amazing works. Jodee Knowles, painter from Australia, will also join us to share her artworks and her thoughts on various forms of art.
Event and Registration Details
- This event will be conducted in in-person and online, and registration is required.
- In-person participation is for members and guests only. Please pay your fee by credit card (Visa or Mastercard only) or at the door.
- Online participation is open to the public and free.
Speaker Bios
Marty Roberts
CEO of TOTEMO
After earning his Ph.D. in Clinical & School Psychology in 2006, Marty entered the pharmaceutical industry. Nine years later, after multiple CEO positions in the healthcare field, Marty began his own medical sales & marketing start-up, enTouch, which he sold to Toho Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. in 2019.
During Covid distance-learning schooling, taking over lessons and teaching his kids the history of punk rock (music class) and teaching them to skateboard (PE), Marty decided to teach his children about art, using Tokyo graffiti as the teaching tool.
This experience made Marty realize that graffiti art is the untapped blue ocean of the art world and that NFTs could be a tool to monetize such works for artists and collectors and create a new early-cycle ecosystem to the art world.
As a musician, but a totally non-skilled super-fan of visual artists, contemplating a new art start-up, Marty thought “Why not?!? We might fail and lose a bunch of money, or we might succeed. And in either case we are supporting artists who make our world more thoughtful and beautiful.”
Despite trying to write this bio in 3rd person to sound official, this is actually what I think. Art just makes the world so much more beautiful, and I want that for my kids and everyone else’s too. Peace -Marty
Elena Calderon Alaez
Head of Curation & Artist Management, TOTEMO
Elena Calderón Aláez is a graduate in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage at the Complutense University of Madrid. Elena was an active member of the ST.A.CO group (Street Art Conservators of the TEI of Athens) during an Erasmus scholarship in Greece (2014-2015). Elens’s degree project focused on the conservation and restoration of works by the artist Eltono in Madrid.
In 2017, Elena completed her Master’s degree in Conservation and Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the UPV of Bilbao with a thesis focused upon Interventionist /Appropriationist Urban Artists in Spain. Elena is currently a member of the Street Art Cities community, where she has documented murals from cities such as Bilbao, Stockholm, Reykjavik, Maribor and currently Tokyo.
She has published several articles in the online magazine MURAL, researching about art in the public space. Her most recent related article was “GRAFFITI CULTURE IN TOKYO: THE STREETS ARE YOURS” published in the Japanese magazine Sabukaru.
In 2022, Elena participated as a lecturer in two Europeans street art conferences: Urban Creativity in Lisbon and Ljubljana Street Art Festival, with the presentation: “Timeless graffiti (NFT marketplace)”.
Currently, Elena is the Chief Curator of TOTEMO Street art marketplace based in Tokyo, since 2022.
Jodee Knowles
Painter
Jodee Knowles, painter born in Perth, Australia. Worked during 12 years using only pen and pastels to make her portraits, to finally try mural art in the last years. Her female figures are quite characteristic for their big, sad, dripping eyes. Simultaneously astonishing and heartbreaking, the drawings portray unbuckling human emotion and experience. Knowles finds her inspiration within fashion and other strong individuals in her life, yet her work essentially depicts confusion and troubling human experiences. “My portraits are a reflection of one’s memories and expectations, in which the concept of an intoxicating other is celebrated or hated by thematically dealing with the feeling of being torn between addiction and satisfaction – between excess and boredom.”
Event Details
(In-person: Members & guests only / Online: Open to the public)
International House of Japan B1