The 888 Inner Artist Initiative — January 2023 Update
It is hard to believe that the first month of 2023 has already come and gone.
The 888 Inner Artist Initiative had a very successful start in 2022 (for those who missed it, here was our previous end of 2022 review). Our focus for this year is on expanding our efforts to celebrate, support, and empower artists by growing and scaling our endeavors.
One way we plan to grow and scale is by enlisting talented individuals to help us. Just this month, we promoted one of our moderators to the “IAI Team,” which is our internal role for those who have a special focus on building the future of the 888 Inner Artist Initiative.
Last month, we celebrated the milestone of having assigned the Verified Inner Artist role to over 88 talented artists. We have now passed the three digit threshold and continue to welcome new artists into our Verified Inner Artist community on a consistent basis. Many projects partner with artists, but our goal is to create a safe and welcoming home for artists, such that wherever they go in their careers (in which we hope to help them), they can always come back to our community for support and fellowship with other artists. We want to build the best artist community (and the best “supportive of artists” community) in Web 3.0, and we continue to make progress in that regard. Artists interested in the Verified Inner Artist role can apply here.
As our artist community grows in number and influence, that allows us to explore new, bigger, and better opportunities to support our artists in a wide variety of ways. A big goal for 2023 will be to explore these opportunities for our artists.
Another goal of 2023 is to find ways to better integrate what the 888 Inner Artist Initiative does with the bigger picture of what the 888 Inner Circle does, as a whole. We have a community of thousands of members in our club, and we will be exploring ways to bring together our artists and our other amazing members in new and exciting ways.
And of course, we continue to purchase up to 1 ETH (or the SGB or Flare equivalent on Sparkles) of art every week in our weekly celebration of art, which has also grown, in terms of interest and participation. Speaking of which …
Weekly Celebration of Art
Here is the art that we have purchased since our last update.
Week 19
Hollow by @crunchyoreoX
Week 20
In the deep, all these questions sink away by @KaciiEleven
Week 21
Lion King by @JayJay__92
Week 22
From Another World by @EdurneNaia
Week 23
Anime”ME” — Japan Raw Treasures by Manuela Ovalle
Spotlight Artist AMAs
We also continue to offer the artists that we purchase art from an Ask Me Anything (AMA) interview in our Artist Spotlight channel.
Here is a sampling of the AMAs that we had this past month (slightly edited). To see the complete interviews, please visit the artist-spotlight channel in our Discord Server.
@Jpearlking (who we previously purchased this amazing piece from)
Question:
You are an artist from Africa, specifically Nigeria. What can you tell our audience about the African/Nigerian art/Web 3.0 scenes? Is there anything interesting going on that you think we should know about?
Answer:
The NFT Web3 scene in Nigeria is quite a lot, with restrictions on Crypto in Nigeria.
I remember joining the NFT space when there was a ban on Twitter. It was really stressful.
Artists frequently struggle with visibility. Being seen by other high-level artists and collectors in space is a struggle.
Also a struggle is the lack of more Nigerian NFT enthusiasts and collectors
The bear market too has had a toll on artists.
But the good thing is that Africans are getting to know about Web3 more, and we are having more people join.
Here is another piece by the artist:
To learn more about Jpearlking, please visit the artist’s Twitter.
@crunchyoreoX
Question:
Please tell us about this piece that you submitted for us. What was your inspiration?
Answer:
Hollow was a personal piece for me. The colours represent opportunities laid before the man in the form of a vortex. He is presently undecided on what to do but his shadow is being pulled into a world of opportunities that he is unfamiliar with.
Here is another piece by the artist:
To learn more about crunchyoreox, please visit the artist’s Twitter and linktr.ee.
@KaciiEleven
Question:
Please tell us about this piece that you submitted for us. What was your inspiration for it?
Answer:
“In the deep, all these questions sink away” is about what it feels like when you are underwater. When I learned to swim, and got comfortable underwater, I notice I concentrated on just swimming and staying afloat. Reocurring thoughts about life situations are completely forgotten when I swim. The piece also makes you wonder what the figure standing at the edge of the pool is thinking. Outside water, there are many things to distract you, inside or under water, you just want to stay afloat, or calculate when to go up for air.
Here is another piece by the artist:
To learn more about KaciiEleven, please visit the artist’s Twitter and Medium.
@EdurneNaia
Question:
Your art was once curated for an art show by one of our Realm partners, Paris Hilton. Can you tell us about the experience and the piece that Paris chose?
Answer:
When I came into the NFT space I felt I was going to have some sort of connection with Paris, so I was very happy when she chose my piece for NFT Liverpool. I admire her a lot as a woman entrepreneur.
The piece is one of my favorites, “Welcome to my World”, also it has been the most popular on Instagram, the reel has reached 461K.
It’s currently available on the secondary market.
Here is another piece by the artist:
To learn more about EdurneNaia, please visit the artist’s Twitter and bio.site.
Other Endeavors
We are exploring a number of possible opportunities, benefits, and “little things we can do” to help celebrate, support, and empower artists.
One of the “little things” that we did this month is to introduce an “Archives” channel in our server to make it easier for our artists and our community to keep track of the various things that we do. We also continue to “ask artists” for their feedback and wisdom about a wide variety of topics.
We also introduced our first “creative opportunity” for artists in the form of a merch design event. The 888 Inner Circle community is making plans for NFT.NYC, and part of those plans involve giving our community members (including our Verified Inner Artists) the opportunity to design our merch for the event.
We also are working on many other things behind the scenes that we hope to reveal more about soon.
2022 was an excellent start for the 888 Inner Artist Initiative, and we are excited for all that is to come in 2023!
***
As a reminder, the 888 Inner Artist Initiative is not just a single program. Rather, it is a comprehensive and ever-increasing set of efforts and endeavors designed to celebrate, empower, and support artists. Our goal is to meet the various needs of various artists, in a wide variety of ways, wherever they may be on their artistic journey.
For more information, please join our Discord server, follow our Twitter, and view our Medium. Also, as a reminder, if you are an artist, we encourage you to apply to become a Verified Inner Artist. No token purchase is necessary, but you will need to join our Server and be verified as a community member in order to receive the role.
