1 Bucks Man’s COVID Pivot To The Forefront Of Digital Art Trading

YARDLEY, PA — Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are a critical technological stepping stone with an unfortunately vague name. At least, that’s how Roger Dickerman of Yardley describes the cryptocurrency system through which he’s developed a new livelihood in the digital art trading world.

“It’s easy to know you own something physical,” he told Patch, explaining how NFTs answer an urgent call: the capacity for ownership of digital goods.

“Digital artists never had a way to sell their artwork, because there was never a way to own digital art,” he explained.

Where others might dismiss the new technology as a fad, Dickerman saw a real opportunity giving artists credence they hadn’t previously received. He believes it’s a new Renaissance.

“If you go into the city of Philadelphia, all those streets [and billboards], that’s all digital art,” he said. “Those are digital artists that are working under the employment of a company, or being contracted. But what about a digital artist that’s the next Picasso?”

With this burgeoning technology, Dickerman explained, the next Picasso could sell an artwork at 19 for $100, and see 10 percent of the profit from a $1,000,000 secondary sale years later. It’s a possibility that he says hadn’t even previously existed for mainstream visual artists.

But let’s back up. Before Dickerman was thinking about any of this, before he launched his own digital art gallery online and began working with artists and collectors, he owned a fitness business in Philadelphia with his wife, Marissa. After starting Relentless Fitness, the family moved to Yardley — Dickerman had grown up in Richboro.

“It was a successful ten years,” he said. “We moved locations, we expanded, and everything was going pretty well there.”

Their gymnastics and training gym survived virtually for the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. But last summer, Dickerman and his wife made the difficult call to close things down.

That’s when he first began learning about NFTs, calling back to his roots in business and finance. A friend of his had visited an auction house that sold someone a physical artwork alongside its digital NFT counterpart; he read a cryptocurrency newsletter on digital art by the entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano.

“I just kept going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole,” he said of his first few months researching NFTs.

When he was ready to invest, he used a website called Nifty Gateway, where one can invest U.S. dollars rather than just cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or ethereum. As he applied his interest in finance to this new technology, he was also rekindling his childhood love of drawing and comic books. It felt like connecting all the dots.

“This was where I had to be,” he said.

The way Dickerman sees it, there are three broader strategies toward success in the NFT sphere: long term investments in cryptocurrency, short term investments in specific digital goods to resell when the price is right, and building out your own platform in the space. The more he learned, the more excited he became about that third option.

So he created Artifex, a time capsule of the digital art NFT space that features a gallery of 100 artists’ visual answers to the question: How would you represent yourself in a work of art? The project then takes that artist’s original character and makes a 3D model that can be placed in augmented reality, virtual reality, or a digital world like a video game.

Artifex isn’t just the name for the site, but also for the product.

“The Artifex is a 3D sculpture of each artist’s work, created by art director DurkAtWork,” the website reads. “The character steps out of the original artwork into 3D virtual immortality. The sculpture is timeless and has a roadmap for metaverse-compatibility, AR filters, and more.”

Dickerman has continuously been inspired by the artists he’s worked with so far. Some of his favorites include Fvckrender, “a visionary in NFTs” who is “on his own meteoric rise”; Victor Mosquera, about whom he says “looking at his art brings me great joy”; and Raf Grassetti, a digital sculptor “who I do believe will end up in the MOMA.”

In building this space, meeting these creators and many more, Dickerman said he’s grown a real sense of community. He’s interfaced with many people at the forefront of the industry, all without needing to move to New York or California. He just needed Twitter and Discord.

“My entire education process took place from Yardley, Pennsylvania in a home office,” he said. “We get the benefit of living where we want to live, while I’m also doing what I want to do.”

To learn more about Artifex, check out the digital art space online.

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