Consolidating
On this day of remembrance for a change maker of epic proportions, I reflect on Martin Luther King’s courage to move things forward. And I’d like to do the same. Not in a manner that could ever be compared, but in little ways. And one of those little ways is with Phantasm, my labor of love and philanthropy.
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The mission with Phantasm is to change expectations of best-behavior online when it comes to sharing art and respecting artists, and is why I pay the artists whose work I impermissibly feature. But today I'd like to instigate an even smaller change—a change for Phantasm itself.
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For years I've displayed art on this account in a gallery-esque way, with white space meant to depict a physical gallery’s focused immersion on a sole piece of art. I’m proud of having followed this conceptual idea for so long, but find it time, now, to move away from this.
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I’ve written before of my awareness of the annoyance blank white posts create for followers in their feed, and attempted to remedy this by creating a sister account, Sliced, where I posted the same artwork without negative space. But in doing that, I learned that having two accounts is even more of a red flag to artists that Phantasm is just another spam account—a hurdle that’s difficult enough to get past with only one account of hardly any followers.
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And so today I'm re-consolidating Phantasm to one Instagram account, and will be consolidating all of the art I post from here on without the burden of blank space. I know this change will make the past few years' art appear off center when scrolling down this page much of the time, but I'm ok with that. Change is messy. But with enough time passed, it appears beautiful. And posterity—that is, the future—is what I do this for just as much as for artists in the present moment. Much like Martin Luther King, for all of us.
Rachel Breeden (Circa 78 Designs)
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