Kids art as NFTs, a way to inspire or to increase inequality?

How it all started

When I was about 9 years old I went to an auction with my mom. A real auction with a guy shouting words at 300 syllables a minute. While she was trying to figure out if an old armoire would fit in our van, I was sitting in the back of the room on a folding chair drawing a black and white flower with pencil. I'm sure it was the standard rose-like bud on a long stem that new, young artists gravitate to, but it was something I spent hours trying to perfect in the back of that wooden barn and it was something I was proud of.

When I was even younger, I saw my mom drawing pictures of gnarled trees and cats. She wasn't one for artistic creativity, but she liked to pull out her pencils on occasion. She'd buy books on how to draw different things and then she'd follow the pages and copy animals, tree trunks, cartoons, etc. Usually in pencils, sometimes in pastels. She even went through a cartoon/illustration phase where she illustrated one of my dad's children's books with old fashioned tracing paper, design markers, and reams of paper. When I was about 5 years old, she started buying me art books, too. I never liked following directions much, but I do remember the first time art clicked for me. My mom was drawing so I decided to as well. I carefully drew a lady with a large, wide-brim hat. I probably erased and redrew her jaw line a thousand times. When I was done, and the entire evening had been wasted (which my parents probably appreciated since I was silent and happy for the whole night), I had a picture that may not have employed the use of shadows or highlighting, but it did resemble a woman with a hat. I'd never been so proud. I went on to complete a commercial art program in high school (which meant I got to skip about 50% of the math and science classes most kids take, yay me!), win a few state-wide competitions, and I was offered a scholarship to a prestigious art school (that I turned down).

My first sale as a 9 year old

...but back at that auction. The barn felt huge, even though it probably only had 50 seats in it. Off the auction floor were two balconies that hung over the parking lot where people would go to smoke and I would go to wiggle my kid-legs when I got bored. On that particular night, I brought my flower drawing with me. A man was outside smoking and asked if he could see my picture, apparently he'd seen me drawing it (don't worry, this doesn't get creepy, I'm pretty sure he was a father himself who knew the power of appreciation), and he offered to buy it. I don't know how much he paid for it, maybe $3? He told me he wanted to be my first customer, "who knew, maybe it'd be worth something one day?" It was the first time I got outside validation for my art and it wasn't because my overly-supportive mom wanted to buy something from me, or because my dad was out hawking my drawings. It was because I sat there, doing something I loved, and a nice dude decided to encourage that.

Passing it on to the next generation

Last year during quarantine, my 5 year old son and I started doing art together. He feels extra special when he can use my supplies, so we've done a few multi-day paintings where he does the paintings, but I give him tips on how to balance a composition, practice restraint when you get carried away by adding more and more and more [and MORE] hair to a cartoon head, how to plan what you'll do before starting (and if you don't want to go insane later on, how to paint the background first), and most importantly, how to wash my brushes so I don't have to buy new ones.

He's so proud of a few of his paintings that I sat on a shelf that when he had his first friend come to our house, he grabbed his paintings and walked around holding them up to different walls until he found where they could be most prominently displayed because, "Garrett will think these are pretty and I want out house to look pretty for him!".

More recently, he's seen me getting involved with NFTs. I've been mostly posting little collages and silly stuff on different sites as a way to understand the market, so I haven't been taking myself too seriously. When my kid started ferociously saving the $.50 he makes by doing the laundry so he could buy more toys, I had a great idea. What if I posted one of his paintings as a NFT. I didn't mind it cluttering up my accounts, since I'm not trying to go full-time on Rarible or anything.

So I did, and I shared this Panda online. But that's about all I did.

Then I started learning how to use Adobe Animate, so he and I threw together a collage of two of his drawings (including a little felt monster face that looks like a pig crossed with a monkey) and made the character climb up and down a tree. It was pure mama-son quality time.

Through that post and another where I shared his first sale, I've met a handful of other people shilling children's artwork, which is adorable.

So what's the problem?

Not only are other parents posting their kids NFT's, but they're eating massive amounts of ETH in gas fees (easily 100s of dollars) and spending hours of time promoting their kid's art on platforms like Clubhouse and Instagram. In turn, their young children are selling average kid's sketches for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. These are not savant children (nor was I and neither is my son), but just kids full of wonder and crayons.

I remember my first sale, so shouldn't I feel great about these kids feeling validated like I did?

Well, I should. But I have a moral dilemma about the fact that me, as someone who has the time and resources to play around on NFT sites, is giving my 5 year old access to an audience and platform he hasn't earned. And I'm doing it while kids who have deep, legitimate interest and talent in art aren't able to get the same validation. Children without computers. Children whose parents don't understand NFTs (which, let's be honest, is still the majority of the population), or who don't use cryptocurrencies. Parents who can't eat gas fees or even afford the 5 hive it takes to mint a new piece. But even then, I feel less guilty about posting my kid's art and essentially letting people come across it on their own, than I do about knowing that other parents are out there working as PR people on behalf of their small children who don't even know what's happening.

NFTs were supposed to be a big decentralized democratization of the art world. We had a way to get past the gallery owners and the agents and the curators who value degrees and theses over new perspectives and raw talent. This was supposed to be an opportunity for the masses to finally make a few bucks from their creativity.

But instead, algorithms favor the creators with the largest, most frequent sales. Cryptoartists who throw a few currency logos on a drawing sell GIFs for tens of thousands of dollars in ETH or DAI while amazingly talented artists flounder at the bottom of search results.

And when it comes to kids, only the ones who have the exact right parent are able to reach a digital audience at all. Those kids are going to grow up, and if they keep creating, they'll end up at the top of lists just by sheer force of will through their parents tirelessly selling their art to strangers who just want to "support kids with a dream".

Where to go from here?

I'd love to team up with an art non-profit or art class in NYC (where I'm from) or Bangkok (where I live) or anywhere else that money can be tight and technology can be sparse for less-advantaged families, and pay for the minting fees of those kids. I'd like to promote them as a group so new voices can be heard, and validation can be given to the next generation. Then I'd like to disperse the funds so they can get the few dollars themselves and buy a toy or whatever it is they want. And not my kid, or your kid, or all the kids with parents on OpenSea and Nifty Gateway, but the kids who actually need it. The kids who may not always be filled with food, but could be filled with pride at seeing their talent recognized.

If you or anyone you know has a child or organization that would like to be involved, I'll front the money for minting fees and we can make it happen. Comment if interested in getting involved. I don't know exactly how, but I'd love to see this happen so the NFT children of tomorrow aren't all just replicas of my son and our family.