Yesterday, you texted me that Strada is more warm and inviting. Do you think that there's some psychology behind how you set up a Strada opening?
I mean, there is some psychology to it. I try to make sure it's an open room and not a room that's blocked off with barriers, you have to go through different doors to enter different rooms with artworks. This is kind of a silly thing, but it's also part of the psychology of it, only posting the promo and flyers and invitations on sunny days.
But also, with just the artists that we show as well. So, the majority of the artists that we show, are from marginalized backgrounds, either via race or gender. For New York City shows, we try to keep them as local as possible. So, we try to keep it 75% local and then fly in artworks from across the country, for the other spots. And then we had the culture exhibition, which was really personal to me, given that I don't think I'd ever walked into an art gallery before or known of an art gallery that focused on celebrating Black culture, intentionally, and creating a space for young emerging Black talent.
It's something that's a very rare occurrence, but I want to make that a staple of Strada and making sure that we have these culture exhibitions. Where we're able to highlight different marginalized cultures and a very clear theme, that focuses strictly on that background and providing space, one, for those artists, but also for any performances that want to happen as well. Anything that falls under this umbrella of "fine art," 'wanting to make sure we do that and we excel in that, for sure. We had the two performers who danced, as well as a live hair-braiding session at the culture exhibition, with one of the performers being a dancer from Beyonce's "Black Is King." That was a highlight, one for myself, but also for the majority of people that ended up coming there. It's stuff like this, that's just opening up the doors.
I've been very slow to introduce NFTs and Web 3 to the physical art community, just because they weren't there yet. But now, we have something that's very clear, very simple, and also needed for a lot of people. Because a lot of the barriers that we're seeing for independent artists, one is the financial barrier, two is connections to one, other collectors, but also other artists, to receive advice and to sell their work to. So, being able to create one spot and authenticate who is a part of this organization, through this one mobile artwork that they design, and they are an artist just by going through this process of minting this Strada NFT, is going to be key. I'm very excited.
When you're picking the artist for the certain showcase, are you mostly going by theme, or are there just artists you've been wanting to speak with and show their artworks for a while?
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The artists that we've shown so far, the past two exhibitions were themes. They were both themed. Prior to that, it was really just focusing on celebrating young, emerging artists who have artwork that we love, and then just placing them all in a room together. But for moving forward, it's going to be way more cohesive and focused, following the last two exhibitions. One was the culture one, then also the utopia exhibition.
When you're picking these artists and they're confirmed to be in the show, are they making complete new artworks for the show, or are these pieces that they've already shown?
It depends. Some already had the pieces done and were just looking to showcase them in an exhibition with a gallery that they like. Then, others were creating pieces specifically for exhibitions. So in this last show that you went to, the two pieces on the back wall by Ryan Lee, he made those specifically for the Strada exhibition. Fred Smith made a piece. It varies. So sometimes it's just, they have it there, and they're ready to present i,t and sell it to collectors. Other times, we ask them, "Hey, do you want to make a piece for an exhibition?" Or the artist is like, "Hey, I'd to make a piece for the exhibition." They ask if they can just make one specifically for the show.
What is most exciting to you about the world of Strada at the moment, or for what's to come?
What I'm most excited about for Strada is that if we were on a Venn diagram, we are in the middle of one community, but also innovation. It's just like, we are always making new stuff that people need. We started off just providing spaces at exhibitions, that are way more welcoming and inviting, and selling works at a commission, where artists retain a majority of the proceeds. Which counters the art world's status quo, where galleries retain 50% of the proceeds and artists also get 50%. But for the exhibitions, we've done 30 %and 40% on Strada, and then the artist receives 60% to 70% of the sold artworks. But yeah, what I'm most excited about is just continuing to, I don't know, provide new inventions and things that the art world needs.
The main focus, we released an MVP. We released our very first prototype of Strada Friends, which is the online marketplace. Artists would list their artworks, make their own profiles, talk to collectors and sell their artworks. We're getting ready to revamp that and build the next stage of that platform. That is going to be extremely revolutionary. One for a community, but for artists at large, because that provides all the resources that we've been talking about for independent artists to go to careers, but from one platform. So, artists can just do that, literally just build your own career from your studio, specifically for fine art, without having to worry about harming your brand, your image, or anything.