What is Sevens Foundation?
My love and passion for supporting our community and future
Starting Friday May 14th, a culmination of many months of work, artist and community development, and charitable spirit will be presented in the form of an art gallery that consists solely of Genesis NFTs.
As a brand new arts platform I would like to publicly explain why we exist, what we provide, and where our history and ethos is rooted and aligned.
What makes Sevens different?
Before diving into our backstory, I would like to share about our key features that I am so excited to bring forth to the community.
1. Thematic Exhibitions & Charity
All artworks are housed under a unified theme and story with the goal to empower — exhibitions are presented with many or all intentions of charity, uplifting community, social justice, and critical analysis.
2. Open Art Submissions
Our curation format is different than what our community is currently used to. Instead of selecting participation at an artist-by-artist basis, curation happens at the artwork level.
Anyone, as long as your personal representation and artwork meets the criteria and theme of the exhibition, can submit artwork and have the opportunity of being part of an art show.
3. Curation Framework
Sevens provides curators a built-in tool to rate their sentiments on all art submissions. An exhibition’s lead curator / admin can select other curators, adjust rating parameters, and all other features necessary to create a themed show from start to finish.
4. Blind Curation
We believe that an artwork should speak for itself, and that recognition and value should derive from artistic merit over prior success and clout. A key feature that exhibition admins can enforce for their curators is the option to hide the artist’s name and social links during the curation process.
5. Grants
Minting on Ethereum, currently where the majority of universally accessible and legitimately decentralized financial tools and exchange of value exist, is currently expensive.
Though this will be highly improved in the near future, we cover all costs of minting and the costs of completing a sale (optionally per exhibition) in the form of an art grant. Yet, all facets of our platform and ownership of NFTs and contracts are decentralized and maintained without our custody.
The Very Beginnings of Sevens
We actually did not intend to be an entire platform when we first started!
The Problem
Late in January 2021, NFTs were still quite niche even amongst the broader crypto industry, which is incredible to think about now. A big goal of mine was to drive more adoption and awareness, and this was the reason I placed a big stamp of support for Beeple in December.
Mike Darlington had brought up the issue of high gas costs as a barrier for universal access in a Clubhouse conversation. His topic wasn’t quite addressed by anyone but it heavily concerned me.
Learning about a completely new technology while having to financially invest in yourself, just to see if someone out there would pay over hundreds of dollars for a JPG that exists for free on Instagram? This is quite conceptually confusing and daunting for even the most deserving and talented artists, especially for disadvantaged people during a global crisis.
This gave me the idea to create a fund simply to cover the costs of minting for newcomers to make this new paradigm more inviting.
Forming a Committee
Shortly afterwards I had reached out to leading community members and artists who I admired and respected, whose work I collected, and who I thought shared a similar outlook. Everyone was on board to help and I am ever so grateful for each of these members for their support.
All together, we opened up and pushed out Sevens Genesis Grant to spread the good word of NFTs.
The Framework
We wanted to make sure our selected artists had passion and talent, so I developed a curation process within the website to automate voting and make it easy for our committee members without taking too much time away from their busy hours.
Meanwhile, I struggled to find an existing and fitting place to mint and present our artists in unity. I also wanted to provide solutions for the oversaturating nature of open minting, a severe lack of curation and themed art shows, and the need to assist and spotlight all deserving artists and not just first time minters.
Thus, with a bit of work and time, Sevens Foundation’s curation framework and exhibitions were born!
Vision and Platform
With every detail and decision that went into the process and presentation, I tried my best to pinpoint and build out the most encompassing intersections between legitimately designed NFTs and art galleries in our physical world in order to ensure longevity and familiarity.
I wanted to build something that could represent what our movement is truly about and create opportunities for digital artists to shine, the community to come together, and to empower others through knowledge and support.
Most importantly, I wanted to create a representation of the ethos being that as much as we take from something, we should always give a little back.
My Sincerest Thanks
I just feel incredibly honored and grateful for every person’s support and involvement thus far.
Without the help of the entire committee, we wouldn’t have had such amazing Genesis Grantees. Without these new artists, we wouldn’t have had such an incredible community and further interest for amazing upcoming exhibitions. Now we have really stacked lineups of curators, partners, and so many talented artists submitting their work, and I am so humbled by this all.
I am incredibly thankful for this huge start to Sevens, and I am so excited for these new exhibitions to open for the world to see. I will continue to provide value through new features and tools for the community to continue to put on amazing shows and represent our future with integrity and love.
Big shout outs to David Ariew & Chelsea Evenstar, Paris Hilton & Carter Reum, my brother Brandon Kang, NUMOMO, Sotheby’s, Robert Alice, Larry Saggese, SlimeSunday & Devin Dube, Playboy, Justin 3LAU, YMU Group, Keira, Mike Darlington, Beeple, GMUNK, Pablo, Eric Young, Eric Diep, WhaleShark, Weel, Jerry Liu, Msistema, FriendsWithYou, Shawn Mendes Foundation, the Sevens Committee, and most importantly the Sevens Artist Community ❤️
