Throwback: Minecraft Antiquity

Art – 2011 | Post – 2019

Old hard drives can unearth some forgotten treasures. Pencil sketching from 2011.

There’s something delightfully playful about plugging in old hard drives that haven’t been booted up in years and accidentally coming across old work that had been forgotten. You get to see something from a fresh perspective and see it for the first time as a viewer, rather than the creator.

The above is a piece that was something fun and quick, done in an afternoon, from nearly a decade ago. Heard of Minecraft? I, along with the rest of the world at the time, was very much into the new sensation. The lego-like creativity that spawned within and around the game felt truly unique and fresh. It was hard not to participate in that.

To my recollection, I had the idea that the game was so popular that we’d be seeing traces of it for decades to come, if not more. Comparing this fact to art that we currently see from antiquity; I thought about doing a mash-up between some popular Minecraft characters and some of the most famous art in the history of humanity.

Minecraft’s Daisy, Honeydew, and Xephos meet Alexandros of Antioch’s
Venus de Milo, Michelangelo’s David, and Myron’s Discobolus.

Typically, unearthing past projects from years ago only highlights how far you’ve come since then, and all you can see in a piece is what you’d change or improve. However, this instance was a nice surprise to come across.

Evan 4-19-19