Coined in Watercolor: Warsaw, Kraków, and Prague

01 · The work before the trip

Three posters, one invitation

In early spring, Gavin and I put the finishing touches on Coined in Watercolor, the documentary we had been making together. We had filmed in Seattle and in Cape Town the year before, then sat down to edit and shape the footage around my story of becoming an artist in the world.

We got in touch with Tomek from the Bitcoin Film Festival in Warsaw. He suggested that I bring art. The festival had those big film-poster frames, and there would be room to put paintings in them. So I made three works especially for Warsaw.

The first was a poster for our own film. It started in pastel, then picked up a loose first wash of watercolor, then another layer with more saturation. I saved the title for paint marker at the end. The subtitle—The Art of Going All In—is clear wax. It resists the paint, so the watercolor moves across it and lets the words emerge.

Early pastel and watercolor stage of the Coined in Watercolor poster — First washes, with the drawing still showing through.

A more saturated watercolor stage of the film poster — More color, more weight.

The nearly finished Coined in Watercolor poster — The resist lettering catches the light.

A watercolor iteration of the Warsaw Syrenka with hussar wings — Working through the Warsaw Syrenka design.

A finished watercolor of Warsaw's mermaid protector — The siren, the shield, and the wings.

The second painting was the Warsaw Syrenka. Tomek and I iterated the design together. He suggested the siren as Warsaw’s protector spirit. I first put her in front of the Palace of Culture and Science, but he said it didn’t work: the two came from different eras and carried very different meanings.

The Old Town behind her stands for Polish resilience. It was rebuilt after the war from photographs and paintings. The Palace of Culture and Science, by contrast, is a Soviet-era monument. We moved her into the old city and gave her hussar wings for Polish valor. At Tomek’s suggestion, I put the Bitcoin B on her shield: a symbol of the tools we now have to protect people from financial oppression.

Together, the three works felt less like posters and more like little introductions—each one a way to tell people where I was coming from before we had even met.

An early drawing of the Warsaw Syrenka composition — The first sketch.

The watercolor Warsaw Syrenka with the hussar wings and Bitcoin shield — Color and symbolism arriving together.

A view north over Puget Sound from the plane — North over Puget Sound.

02 · Warsaw

A city you can enter with a phrase

On the flight out, I copied down a handful of useful Polish phrases. Polish was completely unfamiliar to me, so I wrote the phonetic spellings too. They turned out to be a good way to begin. People seemed to appreciate that I was making an effort, even though, in my experience, everyone I met spoke English.

I had a day before the conference and spent it walking around Warsaw with my sketchbook. I painted the fountain outside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, an accordionist named Piotr, and some of the city’s statuary. There were accordion players in more than one corner of town. I kept stopping to listen, then to draw.

Handwritten Polish phrases and phonetic spellings in a notebook — My pocket-sized Polish cheat sheet.

A watercolor sketch of a Warsaw fountain — A fountain in the old city, seen from the page.

Street accordionists playing in Warsaw — Piotr and the street music.

I found the Palace of Culture and Science and the pre-party outside, where DJ Mad Monkey was spinning. The building is enormous; the party made the pavement feel intimate. I got to hang my work right outside the theater entrance. One of the portraits was of an organizer named Katrina, and I gave it to her.

Inside, Gavin went onstage to talk about AI in film. When the room opened for questions, I tagged in with, “Become ungovernable.” Catherine, whom I met there, was making a film to monumentalize Pizza Day. I got involved in her project. Her presentation was sharp about the real limits of AI in filmmaking, and about the professional tools people can use to make actual films.

The festival posters displayed in a gallery — Our paintings, installed among the festival posters.

A portrait given to a festival organizer — Katrina with her portrait.

Gavin speaking on stage about AI in film — Gavin onstage at the Palace.

Inside the Palace of Culture and Science during the festival — Inside the Palace of Culture and Science.

I had long conversations about Bitcoin and spirituality with Anik Malcolm, an artist with, by far, the most balls in Bitcoin. His piece was called The Whole Entire Universe: 21 million balls arranged on a cube, making the supply of Bitcoin something the mind could actually hold. I loved the scale of the idea. A number that is hard to imagine, given a shape you can stand in front of.

The festival itself was a joy: good stories, wonderful artists, and the feeling of being welcomed into the artists’ gang. We went to after-parties, stayed on the steps of the Palace until very late, and took part in Proof of Walk—a Bitcoin culture thing where people get together and walk through a city. I saw films using AI in exploratory ways, including work that put new artists right in the foreground. Fly You Fools had a wildly creative AI-driven film that was shown a couple of times.

Warsaw also seemed to have classical music tucked into the city everywhere. I stopped into a performance and found myself sitting in a beautiful room listening to a program of classical music, the sort of thing that apparently happens regularly all over town.

TJ and Gavin outside the Palace of Culture and Science — Out front before going back inside.

A festival friend holding a portrait — A painting finds the person it was made for.

A classical music performance in Warsaw — An evening of classical music.

The sketchbook gave me a reason to stop. The painting gave other people a reason to stop with me.

03 · Kraków

A longer layover

Bitcoin Prague was the following week, so Gavin and I extended the trip and took a train to Kraków. The old town is beautiful, wrapped in a ring of park, with a huge castle at one end. The architecture made me think of Prague in miniature. The main square felt alive at every hour; I heard that people dance there every night around ten. I saw it one evening and joined in.

There was art everywhere. A famous art school was just around the corner from my hotel, and I ended up buying two watercolor pieces. One day I sat in the square sketching a huge sculpted head lying on its side. Two different groups stopped to tell me my proportions were off. They were right. I was glad they said something. It made me feel I could spend more time there: there was enough of an art community that people would offer a correction to an artist working on the street.

A monumental sculpted head lying on its side in Kraków — The colossus in the square—and the sketch I had to rethink.

A sketch of the monumental head in Kraków — My first pass at the proportions.

A lively evening in Kraków's main square — The square at night.

TJ and Gavin walking in Kraków near the fire-breathing dragon sculpture — A walk with Gavin, past the dragon.

Kraków also has a shooting academy that’s apparently famous for bachelor parties. I stopped in and got the badass package: an AK-47, an AR-15, a Magnum, a shotgun, and an Uzi. It was fun in the way something loud and unfamiliar can be fun. Gavin and I walked the park, saw the dragon sculpture that breathes fire, and spent hours in museums. I kept stopping to sketch the sculptures and the armor.

At a shooting academy in Kraków — A very different kind of hands-on afternoon.

Armor on display in one of Kraków's museums — Armor, sculpture, and a few more pages in the sketchbook.

A carved statue among Kraków's old streets — Somewhere between the museums and the next drawing.

04 · Prague

Music in the lounge, peacocks by the river

At the Bitcoin conference in Prague, Shadrach brought a guitar and left it in a lounge for people to play. I sat nearby sketching the musicians as they came through, trying to catch them in the act instead of from a photograph. I played a little myself. There’s a video of Wild Rover somewhere in the archive.

The after-parties had great musicians. One band felt like the second coming of Nirvana, in the best possible way. I’d come to Warsaw thinking I might be the only person with a sketchbook at a Bitcoin conference; by Prague we had an artist gang rolling pretty deep. A bunch of the Warsaw people came over too. Mad Monkey—the DJ, an incredible guy with awesome music, apparently a Rasta gypsy living in the UK—was part of the orbit. Fly You Fools kept finding ways to make strange, creative films with AI. Mars gave me a spontaneous back rub. The whole thing had the looseness of a group that had found its people.

Shadrach playing guitar at the Bitcoin conference — A guitar left out for anyone who wanted to play.

A live sketch of a musician playing guitar — Trying to draw the music while it was happening.

A conference musician playing guitar — One of the lounge sessions.

Musicians playing together after the conference — The after-party band brought the room all the way up.

Prague kept surprising me outside the conference too. I found a park where peacocks wandered loose. I sat on a bench and one came right over while Gavin filmed. We recorded a little interview on the riverbank about Bitcoin and spirituality, and the way those paths meet. While we were there, a group of kids came over and got alarmingly close to a muskrat climbing out of the river. It was a strange little tableau: us talking about big ideas, a peacock nearby, and everybody suddenly watching the waterline.

I filled more pages with live sketches, trying to improve my drafting by drawing what was actually in front of me. The musicians, the conference speakers, the animals, the statues: I wanted the practice as much as the pictures. A Proof of Walk through Prague tied the days together again. We walked, talked Bitcoin, and looked at a city that seemed to offer another story at every corner.

A peacock wandering through a Prague park — One of the park’s resident peacocks.

A sketch of a peacock from life — Peacock, from the bench.

A muskrat climbing out of the river in Prague — The muskrat drew a crowd.

Gavin filming by the river in Prague — On the riverbank, where we talked about Bitcoin and spirit.

A circle of people gathered for Proof of Walk — Proof of Walk: the city is part of the conversation.

Somewhere between the posters, the train rides, the late nights on the Palace steps, and all those pages drawn in public, the trip got bigger than the film festival. I went to Warsaw to show paintings. I came away with collaborators, friends, new pictures, and a better sense of what happens when you let your work be a reason to meet people.

And then we kept going: through Kraków, on to Prague, with the sketchbook open the whole way.

— TJ