Bronx Mixed-Media Artist Natalie Collette Wood Joins The Minters Collective

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (November 2, 2021)—The Minters Collective, a creative community that helps artists develop their businesses and expand into the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) market, has announced that Bronx artist Natalie Collette Wood has joined its collective. Wood specializes in collage paintings often inspired by her unconventional upbringing in Las Vegas and her love of the Bronx. Through her partnership with The Minter's Collective, Wood will learn more about digitizing her art to gain wider exposure and maximize profits by turning her art into NFTs. 

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Wood was born in Las Vegas to an immigrant mother who found her way to Las Vegas after coming of age in Germany during WWII. Both of Wood's parents worked in Las Vegas casinos, with her mother working as a cage dancer, so Wood grew up roaming the casino floors and taking in all the city's glitz, glamour, and sin from a young age. Her grandmother was also a seamstress for casino shows. The materials Wood uses in her mixed media collage paintings are inspired by these formative years and the materials she encountered in Sin City. When Wood was 13, her family relocated to Texas, and later Wood moved to the Bronx, never to return to Las Vegas again.

Wood later left Texas, a place she always felt like an outsider in, to hone her skills at The Art Institute of Chicago, studying painting and sculpture. She then applied to Columbia University and was accepted into a joint program with The Bronx Veterans Hospital. In this program, she helped to create facial prosthetics. After graduating from Columbia, Wood then pursued her MFA at Lehman College, studying painting. It was during this time she fell in love with the Bronx and made it her home.

Wood’s collage paintings are influenced by her mother’s unconventional lifestyle and Wood’s own memories of her childhood in Las Vegas. Her art has been described as backward-looking and nostalgic, dreamscapes dotted with ghosts that evoke a sense of underlying danger underneath their dazzle and glitz. Many of Wood's current paintings use her mother's old black-and-white promotional photos as their focal point and inspiration, paying homage to her mother's nomadic, vibrant lifestyle in a time when it was taboo for women to enjoy such freedom. 

"I’ve always had a passion for materials and experimenting with new tools, no matter what the medium,” said Wood. “My art is inspired by the places I've lived and explores how space and time are constantly deconstructing, affecting history and memory. As someone who enjoys experimenting with all types of artistic mediums, I'm excited to partner with The Minter's Collective and leverage the cultural excitement surrounding NFTs to expand into this realm and discover new possibilities for my art." 

Wood is one of many artists currently collaborating with The Minter’s Collective to build their businesses in the NFT economy. With The Minter’s Collective’s help, Wood will leverage the collective’s expertise in the NFT minting process, tax concerns, marketing, and more.