Form Follows Freedom: 0009's Precision & Flow

By @justinwetch

"Most kids drew firemen and police officers as their heroes."

But young Chris Maestas drew Wolverine smashing an enemy's head into a washing machine. The violence was unmistakable, the execution remarkable. When La Opinion newspaper gave him third place in their children's drawing contest, nobody questioned the brutality. They just saw the talent.

This is 0009, and that childhood drawing contains everything: the ability to package raw street energy into award-winning form, to make the unacceptable somehow acceptable, to win by refusing to play by the rules.

Growing up in Sylmar, in LA's San Fernando Valley, Chris was surrounded by graffiti. When his family drove through downtown LA, past the Five and the Ten, he'd see graffiti art exploding in vivid colors, letters twisted into impossible shapes. By nine years old, he was writing graffiti in his sketchbooks, the letters not making sense yet, but the compulsion absolute.

Chris inherited a split education. His father restored classic cars for a living, exposing him to "some of the rarest cars in the world," anything from a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle to a ’33 Highboy or a Mercedes Gullwing. In his father's garage, Chris absorbed the beauty of automotive design: form follows function, every curve intentional, beauty emerging from millimeter-perfect control.

But the streets taught different lessons. Skateboarding arrived through his brother, and by eleven, Chris was serious. This wasn't just riding back and forth. This was studying Thrasher magazines, learning tricks with friends who'd become pros, including one who'd become "one of the biggest pro skaters in history."

"It felt good for me to be hated by the majority," 0009 remembers about being a skateboarder in the '90s, before X Games, before the Olympics.

"I didn't wanna fit in with the majority. I wanted to fit in with the crew of people that were like-minded with me."

By his late teens, the stakes had risen. Friends from the neighborhood were choosing different paths. Some were selling drugs. Many would end up in prison. Those imprisoned friends saw something different in Chris. He says that before they went away, they made him promise to do something with his talent.

"They told me when they get out, they'd beat the shit out of me if I messed up. Out of respect for what they saw in me, I didn't wanna let them down."

Then at nineteen, everything changed. Chris was filming his first part for 411 magazine, finally about to make his skateboarding debut. The knee dislocation was severe. While he rehabbed, friends like Paul Rodriguez rocketed toward stardom. "I lost my chance," he realized.

Post-injury, Chris channeled everything into painting. He was showing in LA galleries alongside artists like RETNA and Mear One, before they exploded. But without formal education, the gallery world felt impenetrable.

So he took a job in the mortgage industry. Good money. Party on weekends, paint when he could. He was making it work until 2008, when everything collapsed. Chris lost his job at Countrywide, "basically the company that was credited for ruining the housing industry."

Lost and confused, he remembered something. Years earlier, his painting instructor Barbara Kirwin had pulled him aside. She saw his talent but also saw something else: "I can tell you don't want to be a painter for the rest of your life." She showed him an ArtCenter College of Design catalog. That's when he was introduced to automotive design.

"Holy shit. This is a career?"

Now, with nothing to lose, Chris pursued that forgotten dream. ArtCenter was notoriously difficult to enter. His portfolio was "absolute crap." But after almost a year of night courses, he got in on his first try.

Later, the department chair would tell him the truth: "I remember your entrance portfolio. I remember how bad it was and how far you've come."

"If it was so bad, why did you accept me?" He asked.

"There was only one reason. One idea in that whole portfolio was amazing."

One good idea had changed everything.

ArtCenter led to Michigan, to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, then to Ford Advanced in Dearborn. By 2016, 0009 was designing cars twenty to thirty years out. While working on a project for autonomous vehicles, he stumbled onto Ethereum. "This can all be on a ledger," he realized.

Ford wanted to revolutionize their design process using AI. They brought in data scientists who trained GANs on thousands of Ford images. Chris was part of the feedback team. The results were too low res to be usable.

"I can sketch a car faster than waiting for this," he told them.

But something about it fascinated him. In the same studio where he discovered blockchain, he encountered generative AI.

By late 2017, when CryptoKitties clogged Ethereum, 0009 saw the future. "What is this?" The concept of NFTs hit immediately: art on the blockchain, provenance solved forever. In 2018, using Codex Protocol, he minted what he believes was the first car design illustration on Ethereum. He wasn't trying to sell it. He just wanted to be part of history.

By 2022, burnt out on metaverse and coin speculation, 0009 returned to what mattered: art. On Tezos, he discovered artists using AI tools. "This looks super fresh."

As 0009, he launched "Metaphysical Duality" in June 2022, using Midjourney v1. The work introduced his signature vandal: a self-portrait referencing his graffiti days. These weren't simple taggers. The vandals stood surrounded by three-dimensional graffiti paint exploding from the city itself.

"Even though people don't like vandals defacing property, they're part of the fabric of the city. The vandal stands there looking at the viewer: 'Here I am. I'm part of the city. You can't get rid of me.'"

@SuperchiefNFT gave him a solo show. Collectors like ClownVamp and Cypheristical became early supporters. When @PabloPunkasso bought his piece on SuperRare for 8.25 ETH, "that really put my name on the map."

But 0009 was already evolving. "I describe it like my process in car design. You start illustrative and end up photorealistic." As the tools improved, so did his vision.

The breakthrough came through North Face SteepTech jackets. In the '90s, these technical mountaineering jackets became the uniform of NYC graffiti writers. 0009, watching from LA, was fascinated.

He explored this streetwear culture for "URBN ARTFCT" on Verse. The jackets multiplied into crowds, the crowds merged into cities. This was the innovation: taking something ‘low’ and elevating it to something ‘high’.

This evolved into Synthetic Bloom, where California landscapes merged with textile patterns. Each piece required multiple steps: initial images created in Midjourney, processed through his custom model, outputs collaged in Photoshop, digitally painted and refined. Never just prompting. Always the full stack of his twenty-five years making art.

His newest collection pushes the metaphor further. Water flows through fabric folds. Lotus flowers float on textile streams.

"This body of work marks a transition towards the flow of water. It's a portrait stitched in duality, the old pulse of urbanism and the pull of nature."

The technical challenge was immense. How do you make water look like fabric while keeping movement? After months of iteration, he discovered the solution: contour lines in initial images that his AI model interprets as textile prints, creating the illusion of fabric flowing as water.

"Worn Currents" is about constant flux. The water represents change, evolution, impermanence. But it's also deeply personal. These are the Santa Barbara mountain streams he hiked with his parents, the Pacific Ocean that defined California childhood, the waterfalls discovered escaping Sylmar's streets.

"People think it's just prompting words to create an image," 0009 says about the dismissal of AI art. "It's much more than that. There's years of traditional practice behind what I create."

Worn Currents starts September 22nd on @verse_works.

0009's early believers include @ClownVamp from his Tezos days, Cypheristical and @kapstone, who've been with him since the beginning, and Chris from Transient Labs who helped bridge him to Ethereum. Adam from Heft championed his evolution from illustrative to photorealistic. Ed from Superchief gave him that first crucial solo show.

Currently inspiring him: @jakejfried ("His mind is insane"), Orkhan for his long history merging tech and art, and @CARDELUCCI, whose ocean photography influenced his next series. "There's so many more," he adds, listing @PERFECTL00P, @nikitadiakur, @graphicapng, and others pushing boundaries between control and chaos.

For future Weekly Dose episodes, @0009ine recommends @orkhan_art ("technology forward art"), @palekirill ("he's not just an artist using AI, that dude is a designer"), and @g0naji ("seeing his progression, people understanding his story would be great").