BRUSHWRK app: Interview with co founder, Odie
“Music has SoundCloud. Fashion has Depop.
BRUSHWRK is for art.”
Brushwrk is a new app for selling and buying art works, i was lucky to get to sit down with one of the founders, Odie, and interview him about the inspiration and reasons behind launching this cool new app!
Poor Tom: What was the inspiration behind the app?
Odie: I’ve always thought about reasons why art is so exclusive and only certain age, cultural and social demographic really participate fully in it and had different ideas on what could be done. But at the start of lockdown, I was introduced to a Facebook group (retro I know!) where every Friday, a prompt was given and everyone painted or created some art around it and shared it with one another. There were so many talented artists in this group, some of whom where friends of mine, but a lot of them had been furloughed or let go from their day jobs. Seeing this made me want to give people the opportunity to make a living off their passion and that was the start of my motivations to create the app.
How long did it take you to develop the layout and formatting of the app?
I started on the app trying to get a minimum viable incarnation of BRUSHWRK. After planning what I wanted the app to contain and what features it would have, I designed the layout and formatting simultaneously while building the app in a kind of “design as you code” way in order to get that minimum viable version of the app ready quickly. This took about a month and a half. Since then, the design has since gone through some changes and I can definitely still see a lot of change ahead for it.
The app is very similar to depop, was this an intended similarity?
Thats funny and interesting! But actually makes sense as I’ve been working full-time at Depop for more than 2 years now. If there is a similarity, its certainly not intended but I imagine I must have consciously or subconsciously taken some inspiration for BRUSHWRK’s design from my experiences at Depop.
The app is for selling art but is this just physical bodies of work? can someone use the app to sell video work? performance pieces? or maybe even NFT’s?
Currently, the app only supports selling physical works (prints, paintings etc.) I’m really intrigued by the NFT space though, and would like to get some NFT art on BRUSHWRK.
On the subject of NFT’s, what are your thoughts on them? do you think they’ll revolutionise the art world in the way they’re intending?
I currently have a lot of mixed feelings about NFTs. I’m excited by the idea that its a new kind of technology that opens up whole new ways of life. Being able to own and trade any digital item opens up loads of new possibilities. However, I am also incredibly concerned about what it’s going to cost the planet. The way that the blockchain, the technology NFTs are built on, is computed uses a LOT of energy. People always throw around that statistic about the cost of bitcoin mining already being equivalent to the GDP of Norway. If NFTs ramps up and revolutionalizes society in the way that I’m excited for it to do so, its going to devastate the planet unless we find some workarounds. Basically, I don’t know if the most revolutionary thing about NFTs is going to be art, or that it will radically change the art world, rather my guess at the moment is that it’ll become an additional medium of art.
I’m very excited to see what’s next with the app, what kind of updates should we expect to see?
We’ve got a lot of exciting features for both artists and buyers coming to BRUSHWRK soon. We’re working on some Augment Reality stuff to allow users to place artworks in their physical space in order to preview what it might look like before buying. We’re also working on taking the search and art discovery to the next level.
What kind of issues have you found while developing the app? any you can talk about?
The biggest issues for us so far are the issues I think are pretty big for artists, which is basically a big part of why BRUSHWRK exists - to make artists’ lives easier and better. These issues are things like sorting out the logistics like making sure people get their purchases, handling printing when working with digital prints etc. These things can sometimes be an administrative minefield but we want to take the burden off artists. So even though issues sometimes arise around this, when they do we’re just glad its us that’s dealing with it and not the artist as that’s the whole idea!
Where is the app available? is it available worldwide or just UK?
BRUSHWRK is only available in the UK at the moment as it’s where the team is based and I currently have my focus on.