If the internet is like a big, beckoning watering hole, what makes some shores more welcoming than others? You may have noticed the waters becoming choppier this year as big, new players enter the scene—the AI gorilla and a Twitter tarantula, to name a few—raising profound, evolving questions about how we build, cultivate, and engage with online spaces. I decided it was time to sit down with one of the most thoughtful internet builders I know. For the past 12+ years, Laurel Schwulst has brought to life networked tools as a designer, writer, educator, & power user. Currently, she teaches web design at Princeton and directs the Are.na Gift Shop. Here’s a selection of projects she has enjoyed working on:

Hold up. Gig work is work? We know this news may come as a shock to some readers. Unless you’re an artist, in which case you are intimately familiar with the hidden costs, expectations, and contradictions of 1099 work. Like many other unacceptable realities of American living, the financial precarity of gig workers has been normalized in day-to-day life and entrenched in our laws. But there are growing networks of people working to change this reality and offering promising visions for the future of gig work for artists. We’re here to bolster 1099 arts workers with a bundle of statistics, a not-so-secret stash of resources, and a heaping spoonful of hope:

I love getting attention. The only thing that beats getting run-of-the-mill attention is getting attention for my creative work. Thankfully, I’m not alone. Craving attention for your work is a painfully relatable experience for most artists, especially those of us trying to make a living within the attention economy. It can take a lifetime to cultivate a marketing mindset, and the process often raises profound, unanswerable questions about the nature and boundaries of artmaking and attention.

Join Tom Luther and Vicky Blume on a daring, intergalactic quest. The mission? Express Tom’s creative practice in words. Their conversation is the first in a new series of artist interviews called in practice. The series is a collaborative time capsule for the Fractured Atlas ecosystem, creating snapshots in time of our evolving creative journeys. This interview, and all that are to come, will live on Inciter Art—a writing, co-learning, and resource sharing space for creatives with big ideas and bigger questions.

Behind every artist is an encouraging herd of supporters. Our herd can include family, friends, teachers, counselors, mentors, partners—often growing and changing shape over time. Whether it’s my fellow staff members (many of whom are artists in their own right) or the artists we serve on the daily, I’m perpetually curious: who helped you become an artist? What support does an artist need from their community? And in turn, how does art sustain and strengthen a community?

In the Gentle Reminders series, we provide working artists with essential and convenient reminders for the care and maintenance of a nimble and flourishing creative practice. If your art is a garden, this series is about the continual weeding, watering, and miscellaneous upkeep it requires. Last month, we reminded you to update your website. This month, we are exploring how tidying up your virtual workspace can jumpstart your creative practice.

It’s rejection season, baby. For creative beings who bravely put themselves out there this fall and winter, I tip my hat to you—regardless of the outcome. The first months of the year are a notoriously brutal season for artists because, while a small percentage of us just received happy news (you finally got that grant!), the vast majority of working artists are questioning why they poured hours of their precious free time into applications that go nowhere.

When it comes to repetitive tasks, no one does it better than Wall-E. Besides being undeniably cute, the dude really knows how to roll up his…sleeves? and get to work. When I’m knees deep in emails, laundry, accounting or [insert your least favorite, most mind numbing task] I try to channel Wall-E. But his space odyssey is more than an allegory for the power of perseverance. It also foreshadows a world in which humans are increasingly detached from their planet—and themselves. A world not unlike our own.

In our newest series, “Gentle Reminders,” we provide working artists with essential and convenient reminders for the care and maintenance of a nimble and flourishing creative practice. If your art is a garden, this series is about the continual weeding, watering, and miscellaneous upkeep it requires. To kick it off, we’re digging into the importance of regularly rewriting your artist statement.

The best thank you note I got this year was a 16-word email. But before we unpack what made it special, we need to talk…