creation = free will

welcome to issue #06 of moments, our bi-weekly newsletter. if you’re new here, this is the space where we share product updates, news from our community, and a curation of the best things we’re seeing online and offline. and if you’ve been around for a while, thanks for being a member of our community. you’re among a select group of cherished friends, family, and early supporters.

march has been off to an exciting start: we launched our biggest curation feature yet, caught up with one of our favorite nyc painters, and wrapped a fruitful team offsite.

now, let’s dive into it :)

this week’s featured creator is nyc-based artist luca goly. he’s a painter and maintains a robust digital practice, creating colorful, emotive, and detail-rich works. we went uptown to visit luca in his studio to see his creative process in person. an excerpt of our conversation is included below (and you can read the whole piece on our blog).

tell us about yourself. when did you start making art?

i was born in brooklyn, new york. before getting into art i actually had a cool career. i was a bridge engineer for amtrak - it was interesting but not what I felt my purpose was.

i never took any art classes. i actually failed art in high school and only started taking art seriously in 2021. i was living in canada at the time and i wound up moving back to new york that year. i came back for the funeral of a loved one and during that time, my sister-in-law gave me her ipad and told me i should draw and get my mind off things. so i did.

from there i started creating more and adding my own emotion and stories into my work. that's when i noticed that making art was something i should be doing full-time. i became very passionate about it. now i feel more connected to what I want to do in life, how i want to connect with people, and how i want to be here on this planet.

where does your inspiration and passion come from?

the majority of my work comes from my life’s experience.  if i have a deep conversation with someone, i'm illustrating it in my head to then translate it on canvas. my work shows people who i am as a person, what i go through, and how i express myself through art.

what does being a creator mean to you?

being a creator is about freedom, expression, and free will. i'm happy every day i wake up because i know i have the ability to create something. i always have good energy and good vibes because i get to do this as a career and i see so much opportunity with it - even bringing a smile or some sort of emotional response to someone through my work makes me so happy.

this week was all about albums, our first ever purpose-built feature for curation. albums let you bring all your favorite moments together into shared folders, unlocking new possibilities around remixing, curating, and organizing.

whether it’s a group of watercolor sketches, an archive of poster designs, or just pictures of your dog – albums can be the home for all of it.

to celebrate the launch, we tapped three of our favorite creators: don polistico, billie fabrikant, and ana callahan. each of them made custom albums to celebrate the launch, ranging from poster designs to electronic mixtapes and digital drawings inspired by color theory.

curious to see what they curated? we shared all their albums (and more behind-the-scenes on how we put the feature together in our latest blog post.)

this past week our team spent time together for an in-person offsite. we spent three days thinking deeply about creation and curation, heads down coding and designing the future of primitives.

as we work on building even more features into primitives, we’d love to hear from you – what are you dreaming about? what creation features would you want to see?

what else have we been thinking about recently? token-enabled playlists (and the playlist), the idea that everyone is a gamer, oscar yi hou’s stunning portraits at the brooklyn museum, and letting an ai bot roast our music taste.

p.s. want to see highlights from the best things minted on primitives this week? we’re rounding them up in our stories and you can vote for your faves :)

as always, thanks for being here! we love having you as a member of our community. have any questions? feel free to shoot us an email or slide into our dms.