When I release a new genArt project, holders of my previous work are generally allowed to mint editions for free up to the limit of their reserves on a first come, first served basis. If any unclaimed editions remain at the expiration of the reserve release period, they are offered for public sale. There are a number of reasons I've elected to take this approach, from the mundane to the somewhat ineffable.

On the mundane front, I am perhaps lazy - lazy at least when it comes to sales and marketing. I find it excruciating and I simply don't want to spend my time doing it. But there is more to it than that. There is some ego involved. If I price the work at a value that I think appropriate, experience tells me it won't sell, and pricing it for peanuts is humiliating. Giving it away feels less forced. And allowing the price to be set on the secondary market feels more natural. If the piece is economically successful, I can sell the editions I am holding at market prices and enjoy my renumeration. I have been told that my laissez-faire attitude toward sales is harmful to the overall ecosystem and the well being of artists. Perhaps that's fair criticism. In the end, it is the mold that fits me.

On the more ineffable side, there is hardly a thing more depressing than creating space for work to bloom and see it wither on the vine. Generative art, at least in the long form variety, requires human interaction. The algorithm creates the possibility but is nothing without the editions. More critical than any fame or fortune, I need to see the work live, become manifest. I did not realize that aspect of the space when I created my first generative art work last September, but I soon found it to be, for me, an essential truth.

This morning, coming off the mint out of Quadrangle of My Being, I had a flash of further insight. It occurred to me that watching the mints happen feels more like an event or a performance rather than the creation of a thing. It is the experience of my work coming into being that matters most.

As an analog artist, I am a photographer. Even at 4 feet across and printed on aluminum, a photograph remains an object. I produce it, I deliver it to the gallery, I hope visitors are mesmerized by it, I hope a well heeled collector buys it. I accept that all this will occur at a distance from me. My work has gone into the world like a baby turtle hatched on a beach from which its mother vanished long ago.

By contrast, my generative work comes into being in my presence. I create the design space, give form to the possibilities. Then, over the course of a few hours, I watch my collectors bring those possibilities into concrete form. I am there as it happens. I am in silent conversation with them, the doula at the birth.

It's heady, and perhaps it is just a dopamine hit, but it feels materially different in a deeply satisfying way.

Love and creativity always,

Wanda