Tag Archives: art

Power to the artist

I shared some background on NFT’s – Non Fungible Tokens – in a recent post, ‘Digital, collectable assets‘. Since then I’ve thought about them a bit more. One of the things I think is most exciting about these tokens is how they are being used by artists not just to share and profit from their digital art and music, but also how they are providing opportunities for fans to share experiences with them.

See this article: AS 3LAU MAKES $11.6M FROM NFT SALES, HIS MANAGEMENT COMPANY EYES MORE AUCTIONS FOR MORE ARTISTS

“The top NFT sold during this particular auction, which included an opportunity for the buyer to record a song with Blau, fetched $3.6m…

“At a time when artist income has been severely impacted due to the loss of touring income and other factors during the COVID-19 pandemic, NFT auctions offer an exciting opportunity to monetize new aspects of creative output and Justin [Blau] demonstrated that in a historic way this past weekend.”

But probably the most exciting thing about the sale of NFT’s is that there is a digital trail of the sale of these, and many platforms that share them give 10% of the resale value to the artist. First, if a piece of digital art sells for $1,000, the artist will get almost $850 (far more than they would normally get if they sold art in a gallery). But then here is the really exciting thing, let’s say the NFT that originally sold for $1,000 then re-sells for $5,000. The artist gets 10% of that follow up sale, or $500. This is amazing! Often, art collectors make 100% of the resale value, but now artist can share in the success of their works being resold.

These two things: selling experiences as part of the sale of a digital item, and artist profiting from the resale of their work, are empowering artists in ways that were not available to them before. We could see artists that used to struggle creating niches that allow them to move from ‘starving artist’ to career artists that make a decent living sharing their art and passion for creativity. And in doing so, artist rather than producers, agents, and galleries, will see more revenue from the works they create. This could be a new renaissance period for artists.

Thinking time and space

The last few weeks have been busy. That is a statement I could probably say at any given point in the school year, but specifically I’ve been task busy recently. What I mean is that my day disappears with me doing what I need to do and not at all what I want to do. I haven’t had much thinking time.

So at the end of last week I started a drawing on my office whiteboard. It a hero’s journey metaphor for our school. I’m not ready to share the drawing yet, ideas are still being put together. But I can share a couple parts I’ve already written about:

Teacher as Compass

And,

Learning and Failure

I’ve probably only spent about an hour and a half over 4 days on this, not too much time… But this time has allowed me to think… It has given my brain permission to go beyond the tasks at hand… It has excited me about the journey ahead.

It’s easy to get caught in the hamster wheel, racing to nowhere, but getting there quickly. It takes intentional effort to step off the wheel and to pause long enough to think, to be creative. My whiteboard has become that space.

Yesterday after lunch, I was working on a section of the board where my secretary could see me making notes and she said, “You are having so much fun on that board.” For about 15-20 minutes I was! I’ve created some thinking time and space in my day. It’s not only time well spent, it’s time that charges my batteries and help me see value in all the other things I must do. It reminds my of why everything else matters, because our personal journey matters… if we make time for it.

The act of writing

Twitter inspired my to write this morning. The first tweet is by Marcus Blair, but let me share some tweets by him before I get to the one that originally inspired me.

Marcus has become one of my favourite educators on Twitter. He shares tweets about what he does in the classroom and he reflects on his teaching and his interactions with his class. In a time when there is so much stress and anxiety, he shares tweets that I find uplifting, and that remind me why I wanted to get into education.

Here are 3 recent tweets by him:

The tweet that inspired me to write now was this one where Marcus reflected on his own writing:


I responded:


Then almost a couple hours later I read James Clear’s 3-2-1 weekly email and wrote this about one of the 3 quotes he shared:

The act of writing makes me a better writer. The commitment to this act every  single day is itself a reward, making me feel like I’ve accomplished something before I even start my work day.

Yes, some mornings it is really hard to get started. There have been days that I’ve spent more time thinking than writing. Yes, there have been days when I’ve had to rush or even postpone my morning workout because I was too slow to get my writing started, or too long winded to finish what I was writing in a timely manner. Yes, some things I’ve written should have been left unwritten. But sometimes… sometimes my writing speaks to me. Sometimes it is metaphorically a song I had to sing. Sometimes the act of writing is a form of expression that leaves me feeling like I’ve added something worth sharing with the world.

For those moments I write. Not for the actual contribution I’ve shared, but for the feeling I get sharing it. Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.

Appreciating Art

The saying ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is one that holds true when it comes to my appreciation of art. I have very particular tastes and it drives my wife crazy.

Whenever we redo a room and look at decorating the walls, my wife focuses on colour. She’ll find a nice painting or photograph and either take a picture of it to send to me, or she buys it she keeps the receipt, knowing full well that I might see it and hate it. This isn’t the most annoying attribute I have, but it certainly ranks high up in the annoying scale. It’s not that my wife is bringing home artwork that is ugly, it’s that I will look at it and instantly see something I don’t like.

I think part of it comes from years of taking photographs. When I look through the lens of a camera, I want there to be balance. Balance of lighting and exposure, balance of composition, balance of colour. That doesn’t mean symmetry and it doesn’t mean colour coordination. In fact, I like when a picture is able to break the rules of photography. For instance, it is best to follow the rule of 3rds in photos, placing key items in the image on the quadrant lines of a photo cut into 9 rectangles, 1/3 lines both horizontally and vertically. But there still has to be balance they way I described above, especially when that rule is broken.

My lack of appreciation for a work of art can be intellectual, where I think the image lacks balance in a specific way, and my lack of appreciation can also be visceral. I can look at a painting and the entire aesthetic bugs me… or in the same way an image can speak to me, and I love it.

That said, I don’t consider myself an art critic and I don’t go around telling friends that their choice of art work is ugly. But at home, I don’t want to look at a painting or photograph that I can’t appreciate and admire.

As I said, I know part of this pickiness comes from taking photos, but I wonder if the aesthetic I appreciate is something that others would agree with or if my art appreciation is strictly in the eye of this beholder?

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PS. It has taken my wife over 20 years to stop me from buying my own clothes and now I get compliments all the time… that never happened with things I purchased for myself. My pickiness doesn’t make me necessarily think I have good taste. 🙂