Because They: The Origin Story

 

The Because They Collection started with a phone call from my best friend, Erika.

She and her husband had just bought a new house, and she wanted some of my art — specifically, something rooted in Black history. She’d recently visited the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spent his final days — now preserved as a museum. The photos she took there moved her deeply. And she asked if I could create a few paintings inspired by what she saw.

She probably meant three.

But I looked at the virtual walkthrough of her home, and before I knew it, I had created thirteen.

At the time, I was already in the flow of creating collections — like The Shaderoom and Aqua Paper Dolls. So instead of just making these pieces as standalone works, I decided to turn this into something bigger. That’s how the Because They Collection was born — not from a strategic plan, but from a spontaneous act of love, history, and artistic overflow.

And of course, I don’t make anything without minting it first. So every one of those 13 paintings was minted on the blockchain before it ever reached her walls.

Now here’s the fun part.

I was new to minting at the time — and the blockchain has no mercy for beginners. Sometimes it looked like a mint didn’t go through, so I’d try again… only to find out it did. And while you can hide or disable access, you can’t delete a mint. So if you look at the collection, it might look like there are 26 NFTs — but there are really only 13 original artworks. Just a few blockchain bloopers in the mix. Call it digital enthusiasm.

Still, every one of those pieces came from a real place — from real memory, real emotion, real history.

As I began researching and painting, I found myself reflecting deeply on the Civil Rights Movement, on our current times, and on how far we’ve come — and how far we still have to go. I remembered George Floyd. I remembered the marches. I remembered our joy in spite of it all. I thought about how, no matter the struggle, Black people always find ways to cook good food, laugh hard, and survive beautifully.

This collection started in the past — but it lives in the present. It grows with time. It expands to honor Black joy, Black excellence, Black legacy. It holds both the weight and the wonder.

And for me, this isn’t just art. It’s a document. A digital archive. A way to cement our stories on the blockchain so they can’t be erased, rewritten, or forgotten.

This collection is a remembering of what should never be forgotten.
Because they walked, I paint.

The image shown is a cropped section of an NFT from this series.

Thanks for listening — Janel.