After weeks of shameless self-promotion, DM-sliding, begging, and pleading, I’ve made it. I’ve received enough $WRITE to be able to create my own Mirror publication. Moving forward, Mirror will become the primary publishing platform for my publication Curare.

My sincere thanks to Dan Conway, who not only graciously allowed me to pen my genesis post as a contributor on his publication but also gifted the remaining $WRITE I needed. His kind gift is a testament to the community-centric spirit I love about the web3 community. I promise to do my best to make you proud and pay it forward, Dan.

My intention is to use Curare to enable and inspire artists and creators within the web3 community, and I couldn’t be more excited to do so on a native web3 platform.

With that being said, I’ll sign-off with a re-share of the original intentions I stated in the first issue of Curare*:*

If you follow me on Twitter, chances are you’ve noticed that I’ve been properly red-pilled and have dived head-first into the NFT space. I’ve found that Twitter has been a great place to incubate ideas by engaging with artists, collectors, and technologists in the space. Yet, despite my penchant for the occasional tweet thread, I’ve found Twitter to be suboptimal for sharing long-form content.

That’s why I’ve created Curare—a newsletter where I can pull on those threads a bit more intentionally and share more fully-formed thoughts about NFTs and art in general. The idea is to use this space as a vehicle to curate my observations, insights, and ideas with greater care and discernment.

I chose the name Curare as a reference to the Latin root word meaning “to take care,” from which the word curate derives its meaning. In today’s culture, curation is applied more broadly to connote the idea of selective filtering, especially with regard to content. But in actuality, curation traces its roots back to the Roman curatores, state officials who were chartered with the remit of building out the infrastructure of the Roman Empire, including ancient innovations such as the Roman roads and aqueduct system.

The point here is that curation has always been about driving new creation, not filtering existing creation for consumption. It is this original, ancient charter of curation that motivates me to collect art. Indeed, when I purchase a piece from an artist, my intention isn’t simply to consume and admire the art. Rather, I look to foster a relationship with the artist in a way that enables me to play an orthogonal role in the artist’s creative process. Stated simply: I take care of artists.

My intention with Curare is to share stories, insights, and ideas that will support the NFT community in forging a new value model—one that places the artist at the center. It is also my intention to do this in an inclusive and equitable manner, taking care to shed light on underexposed spaces and amplifying unheard voices.