A New Chapter Begins

Dearest Deliciously Devious DeviantArt,

Our community is not only the largest community the Internet has ever seen; I’ve traveled around the world and met so many of you, and through all of my interactions at Comic-Cons, World Tours, Deviant Meets and random gatherings I’ve always said that the very special bond of creativity that binds us all, actually results in a very caring and sweet group of people. Our community of Deviants are also the best, kindest, most sincere people who have ever congregated at such a scale under one umbrella.

I’ve been the Shepard of that umbrella for 22 years, and that has been my greatest joy and my greatest professional love. I’ve tried through all of it to remain centered on the principals and care that each of you have instilled in me, and I’ve tried to push forward standing behind the projects that I felt were the best aligned with our values as a community.

The entire journey of DeviantArt has had its many chapters, this past 5+ years at Wix have been excellent, and the unwavering support we’ve seen from Avishai (CEO of Wix) and Nir (President at Wix) has been incredible allowing us to push forward the big changes that DeviantArt has needed in order to go forward into the future.

On the broader Internet compared to the year 2000, where no one (let alone artists) had proper distribution channels, monetization opportunities, and a clear path to follow to find success; the year 2022 is absolutely astounding in terms of progress for artists. I’m so proud that our humble community might have contributed a bit to the new world that now exists. We lived in a world where being an artist meant certain financial demise.. the starving artist… and today artists thrive and achieve success at incredible scale.  

The mission at DeviantArt is to Entertain, Inspire & Empower the Artist in All of Us. I’ve been feeling very inspired lately to branch out and explore my own creativity and to deviate from my norm.

To achieve this, I’ve stepped down from the CEO role at DeviantArt, and into a personal development role for a while. I’m grateful to Moti Levy @Wannabby (DeviantArt’s NEW CEO!), Liat Karpel @lollycavalier (DeviantArt’s relatively NEW CMO!!), to @@Chris my co-founder and second full timer ever who was critical to our success, along with The One and Only @@Heidi who will both soon outnumber my own years as staff at DeviantArt. The relentless Sasha @@randomduck, and the rest of the wonderful members of the DeviantArt management team and overall team— From B.I. to U.I. & U.X., Help Desk & Moderation, A.I. & Search through to Operations, Sales & Marketing, & to the hardest working product team there is; DeviantArt is in excellent, capable, caring hands with passionate minds.

I am grateful. Please always give our team, and our new CEO Moti Levy, your full support.

All my love, still here forever, just enjoying and sharing deviations.

— Angelo

Aka @spyed