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Adam J. Kurtz has been a shining beacon of honesty and humor on Tumblr for almost as long as Tumblr has been around. Over the past 11 years, Adam’s personal Tumblr has been where he developed his wild career path as a graphic designer, illustrator, author, and all-around artist. It’s where he can get a little weird, exceptionally personal, and uniquely himself. By doing so, he took his corner of the internet, busted down the walls, and turned it—in part—into a museum of his work for all of his followers. In between GIFs of Michelle Branch, funny reblogs, and personal text posts about his life, you’ll find the art he’s creating and selling. His Tumblr isn’t just where he posts about his personal life, it’s not just the space that helped him learn more about the art and LGBTQ+ communities, it’s not just a place where he promotes his art. It’s all of that. It’s all of that and so much more. This is his journey from a teen on Tumblr to one of the platform’s most well-known artists.

“I think everyone goes through this phase of trying to figure out what their next self is, and maybe you attempt that and like half-succeed, or maybe you attempt it and fail, and you kind of just realize that you're actually just going to be you no matter what.”

“I think everyone just needs to really embrace who they are in a very literal sense. It just gets easier once you do.”

In February of 2015, Marissa Rei (@marsincharge) and nukirk (@nukirk) started a movement to celebrate the positivity of Blackness year-round. They wanted every single Black man, woman, and folks who are neither to feel comfortable celebrating themselves and their communities. Enter #BlackoutDay—a day centered around a call-to-action to celebrate the beauty of being Black by posting your selfies, your art, and your accomplishments in the #Blackout tag. Utilizing their social media-savvy and graphic design skills, they harnessed this home-grown opportunity to make sure this movement was accessible and community-forward. Over the next four years, as the movement itself grew as one of Tumblr’s most significant social movements, so has the message behind it. Black is Beautiful, sure, but Mars and nukirk are out here reminding you that Black is more than that. Black is Intelligent, Black is Resilient, Black is Resourceful.

“Our mission statement really is to create sustainable online spaces of positivity for Black people all over the world.”

“We started Blackout end of February 2015. We were seeing Travon Martin’s killer walk free, we were seeing Mike Brown happen, Eric Garner just happened...So what if we just took a breath?”