I'm Seth,

I'm a catalyst for social change, artist, activist, storyteller, organizer, and cultural strategist committed to increasing equity and justice. I created Portals for People to spread joy and beauty, and to help people.

What are these Portals? 
Each image is a portal. And each of these portals is a window or doorway into another world. Some portals show tiny details that often go unnoticed e.g. drops of water on a car windshield, razor wire on the US/Mexico border wall, or light reflected and refracted through a piece of broken glass. Some portals are representational and recognizable e.g. a landscape, sunset, bubbles, tiles, or trees. Other portals have been transformed into abstract art: colors and shapes that can convey a hint of the original scene or inspire totally new and different feelings in each viewer. Portals generally contain bright colors, bold details, and simple beauty. 

Why is it called Portals for People?
These portals are for your enjoyment. They are visually interesting, pleasurable, and stimulating. They are meant to entice and excite your senses, bring joy and color to your life, and encourage reflection on the world around you. Some people like to know the origins of the original photo that led to the image you see as a portal. Other people like to simply enjoy them as pieces of representational or abstract art. It's up to you! And each portal supports real people. All the sales of these portals directly benefit nonprofit organizations with a focus on increasing justice, equity, compassion, and inclusion around the world. 50% of the net revenue from each portal supports an organization working to directly benefit people and our planet. 

Where can I find portals?
You can find some portals on social media and you can find some as anonymous street art. Some portals hang in living rooms and backyards. And soon, portals may be found in galleries and museums around the world. 

How are portals made?

Most portals start as a digital photograph of a scene or object found in our physical world. It captures a moment in time with the light, energy, and emotion of a particular place and time. Some begin as purely digital patterns layered on top of textures or other photos and images. The images are then digitally manipulated with a variety of apps and filters including: HDR Max, PicsArt, Snapseed, Glitch Lab, and GIMP. Adjustments are made to the the contrast, saturation, brightness, exposure, and color balance, as well as the HDR strength, detail, and glow. Some images are processed through filters that mirror or distort. Others have filters applied that mimic oil painting or screen printing resulting in images that might be described as digitized photographic paintings. Ultimately each image is warped, rounded and cropped into a circle with a fisheye filter and mounted on a black square background. Fisheye filters are also known as barrel distortion. "In barrel distortion, image magnification decreases with distance from the optical axis. The apparent effect is that of an image which has been mapped around a sphere (or barrel). Fisheye lenses, which take hemispherical views, utilize this type of distortion as a way to map an infinitely wide object plane into a finite image area." [via Wikipedia]

Where can I buy portals?
You can buy portals here on this website or in person.

Can I commission an original portal for my... ?
Yes! You can commission portals for your home, community, park, housing project, museum, gallery, bike, sailboat or space ship. You can commission them for your best friend's wedding, your retirement party, your dog's house warming party, or your daughter's bat mitzvah. Portals can be printed on almost anything e.g. paper, fabric, wood, metal, your birthday cake, or your birthday suit. They can be mounted indoors or outdoors, upside down or right side up, in the wind or the rain, on the ceiling of your tree house or the hood of your car. Get in touch with seth[at]portalsforpeople.com and tell us what you dreaming about and we'll see what we can do. 

My art business has been designated as a "Trusted Art Seller" with