Generative artist Emily Xie encourages people to use their imagination when taking in her art. To her, the audience’s interpretation of her colorful shapes or playful patterns only adds to the fun of her fluid and abstract-filled collections.

Like in “Memories of Qilin,” a 2022 NFT collection inspired by East Asian Art, Xie has said she’s hopeful that some may see a dragon where others spot waves or birds. She’s stated in interviews that her goal as an artist isn’t to dictate viewers’ interpretation of her art, but rather to light the fire that lets the imagination go wild.

While all of her NFT collections tell different stories, they lean on the same textile-driven, algorithmic-filled style to do so. All in hopes that they will serve as a storytelling prompt for anyone who views them. 

Here are a few things to know about Xie and her NFT collections.

She is a software engineer turned generative art artist

Xie’s love of art started as a child and continued through her college years. She majored in History of Art and Architecture at Harvard College but ultimately chose to steer her career towards software engineering. In an interview with The Monty Report, Xie explained that as a Chinese-American child of immigrants, she found it hard to believe that she could pursue a career as a full-time artist. It wasn’t until 2015 that she discovered generative art thanks to a YouTube coding class, which inspired her to find a way to bring her two passions and skill sets together under one career. 

Her genesis collection is ‘Morphology’ 

Years after her first YouTube coding class and finishing a Masters in Computational Science and Engineering at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2020, Xie kickstarted her career as a generative artist. She minted her first NFT collection, “Morphology,” in 2021 on the art NFT platform BlockArt. The collection included 888 items and is the first taste of Xie’s love of unique shapes and patterns that have become central to her art. Each NFT features a brightly colored background with unique shapes at center stage. Xie describes the collection as “an experimental sketchbook series of figurines.”

She spent six months crafting one of her most successful collections

Xie followed her “Morphology” collection with “Memories of Qilin,” a collection that earned her a spot on notable art collector Cozomo de’ Medici’s list of top 12 most iconic artworks of 2022. In the Monty Report interview, Xie shared it took six months to code the 1,024-item collection. Each NFT differs across four traits: complexity, composition type, color palette, and splotches. According to Xie, the entire collection “explores elements of folklore, evoking the mythological imagery of dragons, phoenixes, flowers, and mountains.” Even the title of the collection leans on mythology since ‘Qilin’ is a made-up creature with a dragon’s head, fish scales, and a lion’s mane. Xie’s mother was the one who inspired the collection’s title after drawing a resemblance between Xie’s shape-shifting art and the mythical creature.  

She is inspired by textile patterns, old and new 

In the years since minting “Memories of Qilin,” Xie has continued to pursue her second career making art as a full-time artist. She has participated in numerous professional art panels and presentations in San Francisco, Marfa, and beyond, focusing on discussions that explore the intersection of technology and art. She has also exhibited work at numerous art shows and venues, including the Untitled Art Fair, the United Nations Headquarters, Singapore ArtScience Museum, Kunsthalle Zürich, and more.

Xie brings the paper collage medium into a digital world with “Off Script,” a 100-item NFT collection. For the collection, Xie used what she describes as a “masking algorithm” to code pieces of paper, cut out and arranged on a canvas, like a virtual paper collage. During Asian American and Pacific Islander Month, OpenSea featured Xie’s “Interwoven” collection on the homepage. Both collections lean heavily on having many elements in their designs, but unlike “Off Script,” the visuals in “Interwoven” pull inspiration from a 100-year-old quilt pattern instead of paper collages. The collection was produced as a part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 2022 “Remembrance of Things Future” blockchain project, which also featured notable digital artists like Tyler Hobbs and Jen Stark. The collection serves as a curated experience of web3 pioneering digital artists.

Similar to the art she is creating, Emily Xie is a collage of her own. She’s a software engineer and artist. A lover of textiles and hand-me-down patterns. Those who admire and collect her art get to participate in their own creative, imaginative, collage-like project when they pick and choose their favorite Xie pieces, perhaps exactly as Xie always intended.