🖖👽 - 04 - Four Score and roughly 12 months ago...

Just the best stuff from the world of Web3 and Art from TMFA Community. Weekly.

Nov 15, 2021

gm!

About 12 months ago we set out on the mission of helping 10,000 artists make at least $100,000 (25 ETH :) from their practice per year. And we’ve done a pretty darn good job!

We also formed this community around a simple set of values so that we could build a productive space for artists at all stages of their journey to access and utilize our collective resources.

Going into this new 12-month cycle, let’s remember our mission and values…

Our Mission — 10k artists to +$100,000 a year — 1 billion in impact on independent cultural production.

Our Values — simple and paraphrased below…

1) Be good to each other — when talking and collaborating, lead with kindness and goodwill. This community is self-governed. There are no gatekeepers. Collaboration is necessary to reach our goals. Seems obvious, but this matters so much.

2) Show up and show your work — we want to see what you are working on! This is so that you can get feedback but also so that you are held accountable for making stuff! Practice, practice, practice. We gotta make stuff as artists — that is our job!

3) Lead with positivity — keep the vibe high. It’s all about vibes. Namaste.

We’ve done a really good job of building this community thus far. Just imagine where we will be in another four score and 12 months :)

Kindly,

Matty Mo

In this week’s edition of the Art Brew we’ll read about:

interesting news and links
community updates
notable tweets

LFG!

🎨 Art News

Nazi-Looted El Greco Painting Comes to Christie’s After Return to Heirs of Original Owner
Three Old Master paintings looted during WWII, including a storied El Greco, will be auctioned during the Old Masters evening sale at Christie’s in London on December 7. All of the paintings formerly belonged to Julius and Camilla Priester; the couple’s heirs received the works within the past several years, more than seven decades after the canvases were seized by the Nazis.

HBR: NFTs Are Here To Stay (If You Build The Right Infrastructure)
Insightful discussion of how the crypto community and NFT collectives can strengthen their ties -- to themselves, their projects, and to the market. Scott Duke Kominers, Harvard Business scholar and NFT collector, discusses why he believes NFTs are here to stay -- and outlines his views on the future of crypto valuations. Featuring interviews with Bored Apes, Cool Cats, and more.

Iron Age Figurine: Mullet or Nah?
Newly unearthed Iron Age figure sports the familiar business in the front/party in the back hairstyle commonly associated with 80s fashion and Lost Boys bad boy Kiefer Sutherland: the mullet. Fashion-forward deity or Iron Age artisanship?

You Decide: Righteous Crypto Commentary or Epic Anti-NFT Flex?
In the painfully ironic not-ironic format of an NFT comes a collection of all 10,000 Lazy Lions, arranged to form a right-clicking hand (as if to save a local copy -- the first point any NFT-critic make: Why buy an NFT when you can just save the jpeg to your computer?). The creator explained the reasons for the “beef” [sic] aren’t for ecological reasons...The real issue is that they represent an attempt to re-impose artificial scarcity on culture.”

💎 Web3 News

Nvidia revealed revealed dozens of new tools and leaps forward in its current
tech at the recent GPU Technology Conference (GTC), all designed with an eye toward solving top societal problems — like battling climate change and fighting forest fires. In a virtual world like Nvidia’s AI Omniverse or the broader metaverse, Nvidia’s betting on the success of digital programming to combat real world challenges.

Attn: ENS Token Holders & Successful ENS Airdroppers
Need to claim your ENS tokens? Not sure where to start? If you successfully grabbed your snapshot (which took place for all allocations - airdrop, contributors, Discord users, etc - on October 31, 2021), now’s your chance to grab your tokens before they get sent to the DAO treasury. You have till May 4th, 2022, but don’t wait and don’t forget.

Wallet to World: Illust.Space Showcases Digital Art in an Analog World
Get involved in this progressively public utility that allows you to connect a web3 wallet, build a 3D scene with your NFTs, import your scene into augmented reality, and place it on our global map for anyone with a smartphone to discover and experience in the physical world.

Discord drops Ethereum and NFT integration plans after backlash
Popular community messaging app Discord has been forced to walk back its plans to integrate with Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs) following a strong backlash from a significant number of its user base.
After Discord founder and CEO tweeted a screenshot of the app’s user settings page that displayed an ETH logo and option to connect digital wallets, he was bombarded with thousands of comments calling on him to abandon the plans along with users threatening to cancel Nitro subscriptions. The crypto-skeptics asserted that “NFTs are a Ponzi scheme and damaging to the environment due to the amount of energy consumption used to mine cryptocurrencies.”

👋 Community Events

Free 1.5h session targeted at traditional/fine artists [Waitlist now open!]

Looking to explore and start in the NFT space? Attend this informative and cutting-edge session led by TMFA community member Amac.

It covers what an NFT is (in language you can actually understand), why they are getting popular, how to think about if integrating them into your practice is right for you, and best practices on launching your first collection.

Join the waitlist for future sessions.

Editor’s Note: If you haven’t yet read Amac’s thought piece on fine art and NFTs, here’s the link. It’s a must-read for anyone creating for the NFT space, whether you’re a novice or a pro.

TMFA Community Member Skywaterr's first LA art show

Pixel_Venus is the first digital painting collection by techpressionist artist Skywaterr. Turkish-born, San Francisco-based digital painter Skywaterr (she/her) uses mixed media tools such as acrylic, spray paint, paper, ink, Procreate, Photoshop, AI, and generative tools to create utopias that emerge around feminist ideologies and abstract expressionism.
Each painting is created with 9+ layers of custom digital brushes and textures, found imagery, 3D renders, and more mixed media. Skywaterr explores the limit of technology and mixed media in her paintings by including many mediums within 12.9" digital screen canvases.
The first 3 collectors of Pixel_Venus artworks will each be awarded the prize of their unique Pixel_Venus high-quality RGB fine art print that is hand-framed by the artist.

🔥 Notable Tweets

Sanchan S Saxena @sanchans

Recently, we announced Coinbase NFT marketplace (coinbase.com/NFT/announce). And today, we wanted to share a sneak peak of the product and get your feedback. Here's a video of the onboarding flow for any user to connect and create their profile 👇