Weekly Art Practice #7

The discovery of NALA an AI powered physical art platform.

Every Saturday I share my art practice over the past 7 days. I'm fascinated by artistic practice – it's not just about creating art but the entire process. From influences and ideas to materials and skills, each artist's unique approach shapes their work, making it more than just a finished piece.

This week, I've been exploring new spray paints, although a bout of pleurisy has me delaying the process for now. On another note, I stumbled upon NALA: The Art Matchmaker, an intriguing platform connecting artists and collectors. I’ll delve more into this below.

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Thank you,

SLART

Thank you so much for joining me in my art practice this week.

I bought some new spray paints to mark the back of the canvases as I mentioned last week.

The plan moving forward is to coat the back of each painting like so:

My doggy assistant, Bruno.

This will more than likely happen next week, as I have pleurisy at the moment and it’s not the best idea to use aerosols when my lung lining is inflamed. Trust me, I am more than tempted to go and do it anyway, as I have a strong urge to go down to the studio today, but let’s be sensible and get better first!

So, in terms of other practicalities of my art practice, I’ve decided to list my work on a new platform.

I got an email with the headline ten days ago:

NALA: The Art Matchmaker - Painters needed

Hi Steve,

I hope this message finds you well. My name is Benjamin Gulak, a fellow artist and the founder of NALA, an innovative platform for artists. Your artwork caught my eye (I saw it on Saatchi Art, specifically I loved Blue man), and I wanted to reach out and discuss how we might be able to work together. We are right now looking for Painters to join our platform as there's been an increase in the number of buyers signing up and and registering that they're looking for paintings. We ask all buyers who register what their budget is and the most popular price bracket is between 100 - 1,000 USD which I believe is within your range. 

I understand the hurdles that artists face. I used to sell my own work through a network of galleries and dealt with everything from trying to get paid to getting work shipped back to making sure pieces were being displayed properly. Factor in trying to be present on social media and it was a nightmare. 
 
NALA works just like Spotify and Netflix but for fine art. It's able to make highly personalized suggestions and recommendations for buyers based on their unique preferences directly connecting artists and buyers. We can very efficiently show artists work to the most likely buyers. Read More

There’s more but I will stop there.

Intrigued? I certainly was. The line “NALA works just like Spotify and Netflix but for fine art.” got my attention. So I took a look, and said to myself, “I’ll sign up later” as I was interested.

The founder is an artist and MIT alum by the name of Ben Gulak who wanted to create a platform to match artists with buyers using the power of AI.

So this week, I’ve added my first 7 art pieces and signed up for the free 30-day trial (it’s $9 per month thereafter). Don’t worry, I’m in no way trying to ‘sell’ this to you, there’s no affiliate link or anything, I’m just sharing genuinely my experience with the platform.

I’ve used a few other platforms with no results, Saatchi Art being one of them. Do you know what? Saatchi Art has nothing to do with Charles Saatchi either! But that’s the biggest draw to the platform. It certainly was to me!

So, back to NALA, As I said, I added some of my pieces to start with.

The user interface is a tiny bit buggy, but I reported the bugs to the support team right away. The beauty of the platform is that you don’t need to share your profile, you will match with art collectors and enthusiasts who like your work.

With that in mind… I signed up as a collector as well, to see how it works from the collector’s point of view. You go through a discovery process, (which is a bit like Tinder - I’ve never used it as my wife and I met on ‘My Single Friend’ back in 2007, a purely desktop platform LOL) so you swipe left for like and right for dislike, then the algo matches you with a particular artist. You register your price point as a collector and you get shown work within your style preferences (as you do as an artist, but there are no prices on any of the works, which is great because it’s about liking the art first and foremost).

Take a look at this short video of me selecting the art I like as a collector:

After a few more swipes, I was matched with MAMBO

I must say, I love their work. But as a collector, I don’t really know what to do next to buy their work.

Overall it’s looking promising, just a few bugs to iron out in the platform, they seem to have the database of collectors, let’s see what their support team say and I will update you next week.

In the meantime, I’m going to add all of my artwork to the platform next week, it seems that the more one has on there, the better the chance there is to be discovered.

Wish me luck!

Orange and blue in my day-to-day life this week:

I kept seeing these Culina lorries on the road and the logo colours stood out.

Thank you for joining me in my art practice for this week.

If any of my art moves and inspires you and you’d like to make a purchase. All you need to do is get in touch via steve@slart.me or reply to this email.

Best wishes,

SLART

P.S. If you have any questions, please comment below.