Fiercely Curious: buy curated local artwork through this story-driven site

Buy local artwork.

That’s the basic idea behind Fiercely Curious, a new website from Tom Critchlow and Erin Przekop, the Cobble Hill team that launched the site on March 3. We noticed when they announced it on the Brooklyn subreddit.

The site provides a profile for artists, shows off their artwork, gives you a chance to buy it and offers free hand delivery in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The artists are carefully curated for now. In fact, they have launched with only six up on the site so far, though Critchlow told Technical.ly Brooklyn to expect some more artists to go live on the site in the next few weeks.

If you’re familiar with art and artists online, what we’ve written so far shouldn’t sound that remarkable. There are lots of websites out there providing some level of service along these lines. Where Fiercely Curious diverges is first with its local focus. For now, it’s all Brooklyn artists on the site.

More importantly, though, Przekop and Critchlow build a careful narrative about each artist on the site. They visit the artist one on one, take photos in their studio, talk to them about their work, get their background and construct a story around the person. So, for example, you see what might looks like a page you would expect on an art site here, with a basic bio and images of the artist’s work. If you click on “Read Full Bio” you get lots more.

Take a look at ink-on-canvas artist, Ai Campbell’s full bio page. You get big photos of her at work, a longer bio and an interview. The founders do this work themselves, and it takes a long time. It’s a human factor rather than some new technical feature, but it could be what’s necessary to get more people interested in buying art.

“We feel strongly that it’s important to know the person behind your work — we don’t want to put work up there on a blank white wall with no context,” Critchlow told us.

The next move for the group, besides adding artists, is to organize some live events, Critchlow said. They are looking around for spaces now. More info about those events will appear on their blog, when it becomes available.

The site is bootstrapped so far, with no immediate plans to seek funding.

Critchlow said: “We need to figure out what this venture even is first, let it take on a life of it’s own.”

Przekop is working on it full time, while Critchlow works in the marketing department at Google. The pair takes a percentage of any sales made through the site, though they aren’t ready to discuss the split yet. They made their first local delivery of a piece of art Tuesday evening.