The World of Full Time NFT Artists Panel with Kira Bursky, Maggie Murray, CAM MURDOCH & Domino

um welcome everyone so I'm super excited for this panel because we have some incredible artists and creators here um big shout out to Kira for putting this panel together um we'll be talking about um artists and what it means to become a full-time artist the challenges the barriers and just in general the type of work that they're doing so with that said I'm going to do an introduction on everyone I have my notes on my phone so I don't miss anything we're going to start off with Maggie Murray she is the creator of Jojo Sunshine she's an artist and educator based in Portland Oregon she's become an advocate of how nfts can Empower creators after leaving the classroom and pursuing creative work full-time every once in a while we host web3101 workshops together at nft conferences for beginners um second we have Kira she is also known as all around artsy on social media so make sure you check her out and give her a follow she's an award-winning filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist she's inspired by our capacity to heal from mental health struggles her work is truly incredible and inspirational I've also been lucky to have the opportunity to work with her on her nft project last year called Magic mind if you don't know what that is head to your socials to find out third we have Cam Murdoch cam is an artist and founder of a web 3 music curation platform and artist Collective known as future surf radio when he's not creating art or building future surf he enjoys helping creators and businesses of all kinds find their way into web3 last but not least we have Domino he is a multi-disciplinary music artist combining music with film Fine Art dance and more crafts to tell compelling and current stories currently he's working on a volume 2 of his album trilogy Domino relies on connection and communication to connect with his audience so thank you so much for being on this panel and I'm Katrina I'm a metaverse architect and I'm your moderator for today so first question is what does it mean to be an artist testing oh okay my mic's on um what does it mean to be an artist um for me I've been an artist I guess since I was born um when I was a little child I was dabbling in all forms of Art and it's just a natural extension of who I am um it's a way to process emotions a way to understand emotions and your just what's going on in your subconscious so yeah being an artist I think is just being a soul it's being a person and existing and releasing the feelings and the world within you I don't know if I could put it better than that for me being an artist is um in addition to like transmuting what you're experiencing internally and and putting that out into the world it's also um a duty of uh observing and storytelling for just the current time so I feel like uh being an artist is an archival practice I agree I agree completely I think it's about being a vessel and and channeling uh whether that's from outside itself or from in self and uh having a responsibility to communicate with people to connect through the Arts is uh what it means to me um yeah those were beautiful answers I would just like to add background working with with creative and wild and bold and fearless energy that all children have and I feel like everyone has that inside of us and so as an artist it's tapping into that energy and sharing it with the world I love all those answers they were so beautiful I wonder is there any other artists in the audience right there oh there's a couple that's amazing well next question um how did you guys transition into web three I don't want to go first okay um so I got into nfts about two years ago before that I was a full-time filmmaker and around that time I bought an iPad and was starting to pursue one of my other passions of visual art and so my brother who's a developer I had a call with him and he was just like Kira you should look into turning your art into nfts and that was the first time I ever heard about that and I was like what is he talking about and then he's like cryptocurrency blockchain did some research found the amazing community on Twitter um fell in love with the community started selling my art as nfts and then it just picked up from there and yeah and then I became a full-time nft visual artist which was very unexpected um I think a lot of people in the space took an unexpected unexpected life um turn because of of web3 so yeah um I got into web 3 because I was uh doing marketing for this entertainment law firm and as the youngest person on staff they tasked me with doing their crypto and blockchain research and uh I looked and I said okay I know some of these words um and it involved a lot of just being on Twitter and learning through participation uh because there's only so much you can read to understand and once I started participating I was a slippery slope and I found myself just diving in full time as a creative um and I remember like the first time I heard about nfts was a friend of mine at a party who just like walked by and whispered in my ear hey man you should check out nfts so the seed was planted then but it's been fun yo shout out whoever that was Gabe and Isles nice um blowing a ton of visual artists on Twitter that were stepping into the nft space around 2020 and I was blessed to watch their Journey um going from completely Independent Artists selling 10 prints to twenty thousand dollar digitals to you know exceeding that and I I saw the unlocks in real time uh so I was learning as it was going and then I started mincing and I saw the unlocks of everything I was already doing as an independent artist from throwing events uh releasing music independently collaborating with artists all of it was already happening so when I saw the space I was like okay this is like how I can bundle everything together to tell these stories and to connect with people deeper so I just uh dove in yeah for me I also had like you were saying Kira a really hard turn um in my past life I was a third grade teacher for many years and then when every and I was very unplugged and then when everything migrated online when kovid locked everything down I kind of went down the web 3 Rabbit Hole I was seeking Community because everyone was isolated at that time and I joined an art community online and which wasn't first web3 Centric but the founder shout out to Maddie Moe he got he onboarded me like you've got to learn about nfts started mincing my work and then eventually joined the team at CoCo nft where I met cat and yeah that's awesome I love it I love how everyone here has found their way into web3 and has kind of come to web3 on their own path all different stories and I think it's very encouraging and very inspiring to hear them um so next question this one is this one is for cam specifically um so you're in the music industry how has web3 I guess more specifically nfts made an impact for music creators or music artists and and that industry um I think the very first thing that comes to mind is is super obvious artists don't get paid a lot for the streaming of our content right but when you think about how important music is it's actually the largest export good in the United States and uh there's nothing that you do that doesn't involve some sort of sound curation or creation right to enhance the experience so music nfts allow us a way uh outside of the existing paradigms of the music industry to dictate our own value right there there isn't like a standard of a song is worth 1.99 anymore the song is worth whatever the Creator or collector values it at um and then from there uh outside of the monetary things there it just creates a a way to verify and put a stamp on your connection that's like immutable um it could be transferable if you want it to be but you just have all of these different new connection points with your your fans your most dedicated fans that you just didn't have before I have a lot of monthly listeners on Spotify and I couldn't tell you anything about any of them individually but I could tell you a lot about every person who I've interacted with through the blockchain that's bought one of my music nfts I love that and I'm really excited to see where the music industry in web3 goes and continues to go because I feel like it's still so early and there's still so much more to to come out um so thank you for sharing that um I I love this panel just because each person here comes from a different area of Art and and the Creator economy so really great panel um the next question is for you Kira so your work has inspired and touched the lives of like many people um where do you take your inspiration from and what have been some of your best web3 moments yeah so for me basically everything I do is inspired by mental health so whenever I'm creating it's about letting the emotions whatever they may be even if it's dark depression anxiety or sometimes I'm really happy and you know whatever um whatever it is just unfiltered letting it flow uh because I think through that process you know it's both therapeutic for myself but then also when you put that kind of work out into the world it helps others to feel less alone in their Journeys and also create space for other people to talk about some of the feelings and thoughts that are sometimes hard to feel comfortable talking about so I draw a lot of inspiration from that um and in terms of key moments on my journey I would say one thing that comes to mind was one of my first collaborations I did with another artist so something really cool about the web 3 world is that you make friends with people all over the world and even though you don't necessarily meet them in person you get to be on a journey with them and so one of my friends um he is based in Spain I believe and we did an art piece together and we dropped it and I think I'm pretty sure this was my first collaboration ever and it ended up selling out immediately which was crazy for us it just felt so cool and then we ended up just celebrating with each other virtually and sending each other videos and just like yeah we did it you know um so I would say that kind of summarizes some of the profound joy that I've experienced in the web 3 world just like those connections and just being connected with all of these amazing people all over the world and creating together and journeying together so yeah yeah no that's so beautiful like the web 3 spaces really brings people together and sometimes you could be working with someone for a year in the space and you have never met them like kind of like here like this is my first time actually meeting Kira but we've known each other for a couple of years so it was really nice to finally meet you today as well in the flash literally just met in real life in the past 20 minutes or so and we've known each other for two years so but I feel like I've known you for ages so all right so JoJo I'm so curious about your you know your journey into becoming a full-time artist because you did your transition from being an educator and being an educator in the web 3 space is so important because the content that we put out there needs to be at a certain level and needs to be almost explained in ways which people can understand because it web3 has very difficult Concepts right so like when did you make the jump into becoming a full-time artist and how to do kind of transition um okay so for me I like I said I was a third grade teacher for many many years and um I got to a point in my my professional career where I was feeling a little burned out being a teacher is very hard work it's um very underappreciated and I when the pandemic hit and everything shut down I finally was able to slow down enough to realize some things that were missing from my life and when I had the time to create and um make the art I realized that JoJo Sunshine is actually what was missing and I was able to start growing my brand and growing my business but when I learned about nfts and how it can really Empower creators um that's where I was just really hooked and went down the rabbit hole that way when I met Reed from Coco nft one of the founders I was really originally only interested in helping with events but he's like you're a teacher you can help people like we need Educators and that's when I realized how um how much the skills that edge Educators have can be translated to the web 3 space but my work with kids in the classroom is very influential to my art and my work that way so I don't know it's kind of like a mashup of all my passions I'm really thankful that nfts are able to empower creators that way I'm I I thought that I was capped in one aspect and then nfts just opened up all of these doors and opportunities that I never anticipated so no I love that because I feel like as a teacher you have all these different tips and tricks when you're educating people about the web three space which is really awesome um we've also been doing kind of like web through 101 workshops at different conferences so if you ever see us in town and you have beginner friends in the area it's a great way for them to kind of jump into the space so on to Dominic now all the way on the very end so you do a little bit of everything so I'm curious how do you fit how do nfts fit in your creative process because you you're a multi-disciplinary artist you do fine art dance video what else a bunch of things about everything I love that um yeah I try and and World build around my music and that includes so many types of crafts and collaborations and things um but as soon as I discovered the space I realized that every piece of the puzzle can be minted um from the trailers that we drop the promotion materials like these things can be integrated in a way that can not only fund the project but allow people to have ownership over these moments and that feels really really important and so it feels uh like a major part of the entire process um it's not the the end goal it's just a part of the puzzle and a new means of connection at the end of the day and and uh connecting with an audience as an individual artist um that has become a huge center point of everything I'm doing and it's engaged me in a way to come up with artistic ideas that I never would have uh because of these tools so I love that thank you so much so I know we only have 200 it's left but I'm gonna finish this panel off with one last question for everyone what advice would you give to other creatives who are wanting to incorporate web3 Technologies or nfts into their process I'll go really quickly I would say my the biggest thing is that if you're interested is to join a community find someone that inspires you that you connect with um because nobody in this space is successful alone so I think it's really important to find people that you can help lift each other up that was basically what I was going to say and off of that you know if you haven't done it yet and you're overwhelmed don't know where to start it could be cool to find an artist who's already in the community and collaborate with them because then they can help you guide you through the process connect you up to their Community their friends their collectors but yeah just get involved get on Twitter before nfts I was like no Twitter but there's really cool people on Twitter and that's like where a lot of the action is happening so get on there get involved make friends do it go for it you can do it um I would say to take your time um it's changing every day is super fast pace and uh have a firm grip on your why stay connected to that and vet all of the different tools and opportunities against that you don't need to try everything facts um all of that was amazing I would say um stay grounded stay grounded in your truth to jump off that like it's a it's a crazy exciting place um and when you have worked so so hard as an artist especially an independent artist once you start receiving any amount of success it's very very exciting and focus and focus and that can lead to extreme burnout uh to where you're out for months uh so really watch out for that stay on your uh your human routines and stay on your mental and physical health and you'll be good I love that thank you so much and with that we are like right on the dot nice well thank you everyone if you guys could give it up for our panelists if you guys have any questions feel free to come up chat and ask them all the questions thanks y'all thank you thank you