Leveling the Field

July 20, 2025

Every generation believes its era is the pinnacle, that things will stay just as they are, or better yet, continue to rise. But every era has its end. Every bubble, no matter how dazzling or inflated with hope, eventually pops. Markets rise and fall, trends peak and wither, and what once seemed permanent crumbles with the faintest shift in the wind. This is not catastrophe. This is the cycle. This is the natural rhythm of any field that lives and breathes with human creativity and ambition. And nowhere is this more visceral, more revealing, than in the world of art.

Art is not immune to the tides. In fact, it may be the most honest witness to them. The landscape of creation, taste, commerce, and community, especially in this hyper-connected, hyper-commercialized age, has long been in flux. There have been booms: digital art explosions, NFT gold rushes, social media-fueled meteoric rises. For a while, the gatekeepers were losing their keys, and everyone with a canvas or a codebase or a clever algorithm could stake a claim. But bubbles are meant to burst. Not because the art wasn’t valid, but because speculation always outpaces sincerity. And when the market contracts, as it inevitably does, it forces a reckoning.

This is the leveling of the field, not a punishment, but a purging of what was never meant to last. When the tides rise and the froth gets washed away, what remains are the deeply planted roots. The artists who show up every day, even when no one's watching. The ones who made when there was no promise of fame or financial return. The ones who didn’t pivot with every trend, but instead dug deeper into their vision. When the noise fades, the signal becomes clear. And in this clarity, something beautiful happens.

What survives is substance. What emerges from the wreckage is a quieter, stronger foundation. The opportunists and dilettantes, those who skimmed the surface for profit or status, are exposed and displace, not with malice, but by the sheer weight of change. And those left standing aren’t just survivors; they’re stewards. They are the artists who never needed a bull market to justify their work. They are the culture keepers, the innovators, the ones who don’t follow the tides but endure them.

It’s natural to feel anxiety when everything shifts. But disruption is not decay. It’s a return. A return to why any of this ever mattered in the first place. The love of the craft. The honesty in creation. The drive to express something real, whether the world is watching or not. The playing field doesn't stay level forever, it never did, but it gets leveled, again and again, by time and truth. And that is not a threat. It is a gift. Because in that freshly cleared space, something more meaningful can grow.

And those who were in it from the start, not for hype, but for heart, will find themselves not only standing, but finally seen.