“Winetooth” Jack Wilkinson
Artist and Collector in SAF residence
“Flutter by, Butterfly” is to me one of the most perfect linguistic anomalies, and I am in love with “Buffalo Buffalo, Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo, Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo.”
Winetooth began writing poetry in his early teens, he has been exploring different forms and styles during his whole life.
In 1995 I attended Hiram College as an English major before dropping out to pursue my other passion, culinary arts. I graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in 1999 and began my professional career as a chef and restaurant manager. In 2001 I earned my Sommelier Certification through The Court of Master Sommeliers, and in 2010 became a Certified Specialist of Wine through The Society of Wine Educators. I currently Work at Bern’s SteakHouse and get to play with the largest private wine collection in the world.
In my late 30’s I began to develop a unique voice/style as a poet and started working on a book called “Brevity.” The poetic style is very brief, hyper-rhyming, and somewhat absurd. The plan was to have one poem per page combined with visual art to compliment the verse.
Then I discovered NFTs! NFTs are a perfect fit for this style, so I abandoned the book concept, and decided to self publish on Litemint.com. I think I may be the first artist to use Litemint as a way to release poetry. The first few poems I released are pretty bad NFTs, basically stock Canva photos with text. As I explored the NFT genre more, I began to design more thoughtful visual components. Sir Cheesely has also been kind enough to collaborate with me on two poems (there is even audio of him reading the poems as the distinguished Sir Cheesely character).
The deeper I got into the NFT space the more I fell in love with the medium and its limitless possibilities. Like so many others I got the NFT fever! I started researching and amassing what I consider to be one of the best NFT collections on the Stellar Blockchain. I keep an eye on other markets to see what people are doing, but I am a Stellar Maximalist and like the low fees and high speed of Litemint.com. The artists on the platform are all friendly and accessible on social media which gives the collector a personal connection to their art. In addition, I find the Litemint staff to be tops in the customer service game. It’s so cool to ask a question on Discord and have the CEO give you a thoughtful and detailed response! Kudos Litemint and keep up the great job.
I have several artistic influences, most notably Ogden Nash, E. E. Cummings, Robert Frost, and John Donne. He also loves Haiku, koans, limericks, Cowboy Poetry and dad jokes, all of which echo in my poetry.
Currently, I’m experimenting with how poetry and NFT’s can dance with each other. I am exploring the concept of “Poem clouds” where I release a few NFTs that together form a “poem” or express a lyrical concept. Individually they have integrity, but when viewed as a group the full thought is communicated (the 3 NFTs I just released as a homage to NUNA is a perfect example). My end goal is to bring poetry back to the people in a fun and non intimidating manner.
Find out more about Winetooth here:
Twitter: @HughMan53889573
Litemint: Lumen.litemint.store
