Abstract Summer on Solana
There’s no place you’d rather be at the beginning of a career, as an emerging artist. Looking back, that’s exactly how it felt. In the summer of 2022, I also started, without knowing it, to experience this idea of “Abstract Summer,” tasting the first results, my first coins, attention towards my work, spaces, all coming from a collection I’ll admit I expected nothing from.
I didn’t have a benchmark, no point of comparison. I took all of this for granted, and now, in retrospect, I’m so fucking glad I did. I sold out my first collection while I was only beginning to go deeper in my craft and figure out who Strakts really is, managing this by trying to shape my own artistic lexicon, and during all this time watching fellow artists kill it in every auction, me taking notes on all levels. It was intoxicating. I grew a lot in that period. Somehow I set myself on the mindset that if they can do it, so can I. Maybe not now, but in a year I’ll build my own home studio, get my skills in order, learn theory. I was dreaming with my eyes open.
I remember everything happening on Exchange Art. It felt almost monopolistic, larger than life. I still remember how the notifications kept hitting, featured on the homepage, an NFT sold, something always happening. That summer was the first time I felt like I was more than just a mid-level architect at a boring residential development firm. I had already started thinking about how to customize that classic answer to “so what do you do” to also include the visual artist side. Uncharted territory. Nevertheless, for me, “Solana summer” wasn’t all fireworks and community vibes, at the end of the day though. I was new, and borderline antisocial. But what I did feel was that contagious form of bullishness, something that opened my eyes to a reality I was both afraid of and drawn to. The childhood dream of making art for a living.
Thank you for your patience, this was me, my Solana summer personal statement, but the idea of this write-up does not belong to me. It was community driven, which makes me extremely happy, because it means that PoA has become participatory once again. Today’s log was inspired by
and his personal account of what was happening at the time. He was closer to the ground, to use a sports metaphor, in sync with the speed of those events. Luc reached out via DM, and it’s worth emphasizing how essential these kinds of testimonies remain. Personal accounts capture what structured records just can't. They hold the atmosphere, the motivations, the informal behaviors, the emotional charge. In fast-moving, loosely documented environments like early Solana, this kind of memory becomes a primary source, not a supplement. Anyways, here’s what Luc had to say: ‘’...This was the summer of 2022 and so called because the love for abstract art on Exchange Art was so high at that time. This is how I felt and a group of abstract artists I was close to. The energy filled up our hearts and the vibe was amazing. Every mint received a wonderful response, lots of motivation, encouragement and lifting eachother up with other artists running to the on-platform chat box below the artwork to posts gifs of support, especially when the auctions started running, which there often was. Artists bidding on artists work because they could and had the income for their own sales to show love and also give that important boost to the ecosystem.
And there were some brilliant collectors who showed up daily with words of support and many many acquisitions.
Not only direct support but, shouting about the artists to spread the good words and bring more attention. We look back at Abstract Summer fondly and hope days like that will return sometime.’’
Statistical side note:
Across 2022, the network recorded over 16.45 million NFT mints, with peaks of nearly 1 million mints in a single day during August, alongside hundreds of thousands of weekly transactions [1][2]. At the platform level, Exchange Art alone processed over 110,000 individual NFT sales in its first year, more 1/1s than editions. [3]. I’d like to end this log with a similar thought as Luc's closing sentence. I also want back something like that summer of abstract 2022, but perhaps a bit less fast paced and short lived. I want it with the understanding that it was unique, and that we’ve matured since then. We need something more sustained, something that extends beyond a single moment.
Personal note here, I can factually see this happening (through countless initiatives I'll be more than happy to write about in future logs), but at a more natural scale, in a rhythm closer to artistic needs rather than those dictated by financial conditions. People and entities are thinking longer term now. Nevertheless, whatever comes next will owe a lot to that initial spark from 2022.
Bibliography
[1] NFT Activity on Solana vs Ethereum — total mint count and daily peaks
[2] NFT mints on Solana have surged to an all-time high — daily mint spike data
[3] Exchange Art Year in Review — platform-level sales volume (110k+ sales)