Women of Crypto Art (WOCA) is a community that welcomes women-identified artists from all over the world, providing a place to come together and share ideas, information, tips and general support regarding all things crypto art. This week we spoke to Sparrow, one of the founders of WOCA.
Creating NFT’s, Community, & Change
In 2020, Sparrow was lobbying for 10% royalties and getting artist resale rights encoded into smart contracts. While this project was successful, when she looked around the NFT community, she saw the obvious gender disparity in NFT sales prices and leader boards. Already frustrated by this tendency in the real-world art market, she asked herself, how are we letting this happen again? As an engineer turned full-time artist who has been tokenizing her own work since 2019, she spoke passionately about this gender disparity in the crypto art world. “This space is supposed to be fair, open, and equal—we are supposed to be building better.” She decided to do something about it. Sparrow reached out to two of her artist friends, Gisel Florez and Stina Jones, and together they started a group on Twitter where female-identifying NFT artists could support one another’s work and empower each other to gain visibility and take their place at the table. Within a day, the group hit max capacity, so they moved over to Discord and had a community of 250 people after the first week. Clearly Sparrow, Gisel, and Stina had tapped into something potent.
Since the creation of WOCA, this community has showcased women’s art at large exhibitions in Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, and Somnium Space. They have appeared on panels and interviews, launched collaborations, and gained sponsorships. “One of the powerful things about being part of a group is that everyone pitches in. It means you can focus on the bits you are comfortable with or have expertise in.” (We are thrilled to say that WOCA has also joined the Panvala League community and is part of the Crypto Art Coalition.) Upon asking Sparrow how projects are pitched and carried out at WOCA, she said that it is mostly about initiative and people proposing their collaboration ideas on Discord—that people who want to participate can self-select. “That is the whole point of WOCA—that it is self-empowering,” she said.
Support WOCA, Support Artists
WOCA is excited to unveil “The Arcana Crypto Tarot,” the world’s first fully functioning tarot NFT! This project emerged as a spontaneous collaboration between 22 of WOCA’s founding members, each of whom designed their own take of one of the traditional 22 Major Arcana cards. The deck is now available to view and open to bid on here. (Act quick as the auction concludes on Saturday, May 1st!) Also, if you want to support, learn more, or join WOCA, you can visit their website, Discord, or Twitter page. Finally, we leave you with one final message from Sparrow:
“Buy art from your favorite female artist! If you don’t have one, we have a server full of artists for you to choose from.”
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