Art Storefronts Wants Artists to Be Seen, Not Buried by Algorithms

Drew Dawson and Nick Swerdfeger of Art Storefronts observe that artists have spent years navigating platforms that promised visibility yet didn’t account for the realities of selling creative work. According to them, many often uploaded portfolios to generic website builders, experimented with online marketplaces, or relied on social algorithms that shifted without warning. They believe those systems were never built around the long-term, visceral needs of visual artists.

“Solving the starving artist problem was what Nick set out to do,” Dawson says. He refers to Art Storefronts founder Nick Friend’s original mission after building Breathing Color, a company that produced print substrates for artists and photographers.

According to Friend, Breathing Color exposed a larger pattern. He observed that the artists who succeeded were not simply producing compelling work. They also had strong websites, consistent marketing systems, collector relationships, and repeatable business processes. According to Swerdfeger, many others, despite talent and ambition, struggled to maintain momentum because the tools available to them treated art like any other online product category.

Art Storefronts emerged from the realization that artists required infrastructure designed specifically around their industry. From their perspective, generic platforms could host a storefront, but they could not solve the operational friction artists faced every day. 

“A lot of our members are still just getting started, and they need to keep things simple,” Dawson says. “Our mission is to provide a platform that hits that mark while actually equipping them with what they’ll need to succeed. That means doing things that go far beyond a typical artist platform, like building the website for them, providing them with access to coaching on a video conferencing platform five days a week, and even helping them automate their exposure.” 

Art Storefronts gradually expanded from an art-specific website platform to include a broader ecosystem built around selling art, marketing, print fulfillment, augmented reality tools, education, and community support. Dawson notes that the company’s internal philosophy remains simple. He says, “You create, we do the rest.”

Swerdfeger highlights how conversations with artists shaped the company’s direction. He explains that Friend spent extensive time observing creators directly, studying how they worked and where they hesitated. Those interactions, he notes, revealed that artists were not avoiding growth because they lacked ambition. Many, according to him, simply wanted space to focus on the creative process without feeling consumed by entrepreneurship. 

“At the end of the day, what most artists want to do is create,” Swerdfeger says. “Art Storefronts was built upon the mission to help them do that.”

Community became another pivotal pillar of the platform. Art Storefronts built private groups, forums, mentorship channels, and its “Small Wins” network to give artists a place to share milestones, advice, frustrations, and encouragement. Dawson highlights that entrepreneurship already carries isolation, but creative careers can intensify that experience.

Dawson says, “For an artist to be a one-person business and do everything, it’s almost impossible. There’s this ‘aha’ moment once they join; they realize they’re part of something vibrant and not doing it alone.”

Swerdfeger notes that the emotional side of artistic work often gets overlooked in business conversations. “There’s an innate desire for creation and artistic expression,” he says. “Buyers and collectors want to know the artist’s story and feel a connection to the artist and their work. Online marketplaces don’t foster that level of connection, so we’ve been very intentional about making it the focus of our platform.”

Twelve years into their mission and numerous members later, Art Storefronts now finds itself navigating another major shift in creative industries, and that is the ubiquity of artificial intelligence. The concern lies in systems that replace human creativity or profit from artists’ work without consent.

“We all love the idea of technology making life better for humans, but AI is different and crossing the line,” Swerdfeger says. “When it became clear it started taking away what’s uniquely human, the creative process and the creation of art, that’s when we knew we had to act.”

The company prohibits AI-generated art on its platform and has introduced human verification systems, human-made badges, and authentication tools intended to help collectors identify work created by people instead of algorithms. Dawson notes the company views the initiative not just as economic and cultural but as existential.

“The slopification of art cheapens art and diminishes the value,” Dawson explains. “Being officially verified as a real human with a real human process allows artists to sell more and price their work at a higher rate.”

Swerdfeger compares the initiative to certification systems used in other industries, where buyers actively seek products aligned with certain standards or values. Art Storefronts believes collectors will increasingly seek out human-made work with the same intentionality. “We want to be the most pro-human artist company in the world,” Swerdfeger says.

“We’re providing a platform that puts technology to work for the good of artists and human-made art,” Swerdfeger says.

Art Storefronts frames its mission around preservation rather than replacement. Dawson says the company’s broader objective is to help artists sustain careers while protecting the human qualities that made audiences connect with art in the first place.

“Everything we’ve done has been intentional because the artist’s success is our success,” Dawson says. “We’re in the trenches with them.”