Nyla Hayes
The 13-year-old digital artist inspiring a generation of girls
When I bought Long Neckie Lady #399 about half a year ago I did it because I liked the art and I wanted to support a talented young artist, Nyla Hayes, a 13 years old girl that combined her love for Brontosaurus dinosaurs and women into an NFT collection, Long Neckie Ladies.
Her first collection, Long Neckie Originals, launched on Opensea in March 2021, a compilation of only 100 collectible hand drawings created by Nyla Hayes between 2018 - 2021. Nyla started drawing at 4 years old and at 9 her parents gifted her a smart phone so she can continue her passion for drawing. Later on, her parents kept encouraging her artwork, whilst her uncle introduced her to the world of NFTs.
Her digital art collection sold for nearly $7MM, with her most expensive NFT selling in August 2021 for 4 ETH, or about $11,737. Given her age, that is an amazing accomplishment, however, Nyla has repeatedly said in various interviews that the message her art conveys is more important than the financial payoff:
“My Long Neckies stand for diversity and women from all around the world. It’s meant to make people comfortable in their own skin and it’s meant to make young girls feel powerful about being themselves.”
Nyla stayed true to her words and she was later named Time magazine’s first Artist-in-residence, recreating the Time 100 Women of the Year magazine covers, with elongated neck portraits of famous women like Frida Kahlo, Beyoncé, Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Michelle Obama and many others.
Using money from the sale of her NFTs Nyla started Kids on the Blockchain, an educational platform for children NFT artists to learn about blockchain, NFT creation and minting, a place to acquire new skills and promote a new generation of digital artists. From TV appearances to winning awards and speaking at conferences, Nyla represents and inspires a young generation of girls ready to close the gender gap that persists in the digital art world just like in almost any other field.
NFT sales reached a whopping $25 billion in 2021 and yet only approximately 15% of NFT artists were women, with just one woman featuring in the top 10 most expensive NFT sales. Despite the fact that this year NFTs have slowed down and many collections saw huge price drops, many women led projects are just carrying on creating, supporting each other and making space for new women to cement their presence in the digital art and non fungible tokens ecosystem. Nyla Hayes is one such young girl that I foresee becoming even more involved in the industry, guiding and helping others succeed.
I grew up in a very different environment, where creativity was seen almost as a weakness, where a young girl was supposed to do what she is told, know her place and never wander outside her very clear and confined role. Seeing a young girl spread her wings from an early age and carve a niche for herself in such a competitive market makes me hopeful that the future can be different, that there is a place at the table for women too, that young girls and boys grow up to create value together, see themselves as equals, and design a fairer world.
Since the spring of 2021 Web 3 and NFT have become buzzwords, overused and hyped to the max. We keep hearing about giving artists their rightful monetary compensation, decentralisation, lower barriers to entry for new artists, etc. And what started with artists just creating and people buying their art or their music because they liked it, it quickly became a race for the so-called “blue chip” NFTs, projects put together by people who hired artists and paid them pennies only to later on sell it at astronomical unjustified prices. And then VCs came in asking for “utility”. Who has ever asked Picasso what was the utility of his paintings?? In the end, NFT projects replicated existing systems based on privilege and favoritism.
Let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture, let’s lower those barriers for real, let’s build together and better. Let’s support young artists, female artists, and give them credit for their work.