Artists Pages, created at the tail end of 2024, is a one-woman show run by its owner and founder, Imi Read. It began in August of 2024 through social media as a private project to promote living artists making art today. Eventually, it transformed into a newsletter the following month, when it released its first issue. At the time of publishing, Artists Pages currently has 35 issues. Today, it serves as a major online hub for artists and art lovers alike.
Artists Pages, as a multi-media newspaper working to signal-boost the creative work of our generation, manages to have a few unifying aspects between the artists it platforms, despite the truly eclectic collection of disciplines on display. Themes and methodologies of innovation, the usage of mixed mediums, build-up and deconstruction, motion, and life are present to some degree across each of the artist’s methodologies and finished works.
Life in Art
Art, in any medium, has the potential to outlast its creator. Dances can be passed from one generation to the next. Songs belong to communities as much if not more than, their composers. Sculptures and paintings can last millennia if properly cared for. However, some art exists for only a moment in time. Performative or temporary art. Ephemeral. Art like this lives on and outlasts its creators. It survives through collective memory and through records and preservation of the techniques used to create it. Art in all its forms is, at least for a time, alive. None more so, perhaps, than this art created through the directed growth of mold.
Daria Fedorova, as shown by Artists Pages, highlights the beauty of the natural world and our ability to influence it; however temporary that influence may be. Fedorova takes something toxic and turns it into something beautiful. She turns it into something meaningful. And what is the point of art if not to mean something, to represent, to invoke authentic feelings in a world that prioritizes the shallow illusion of it?
Technology in Art
In our current age, we are faced with a unique opportunity. Thanks to the continuous and rapid advancement of technology, artists can create art in ways and through methods that past artists could never even have dreamed of. The ability to create the illusion of life in the complete absence of it, through a deception of the senses. AI can talk to its audience, images can move, and metal can pantomime life in new, inventive, and horrifying ways. As Artists Pages videos show, sometimes there are ghosts of our own making driving our machines. Art today can make its audience question what it means to be alive, to be real. Art lies to us to make us feel something honest.
Today, light can wear a human face, and sculptures can have lungs, as seen in Joshua Ellingson and Thomas Besset’s works. We live in a world where the most inventive minds of our time are working to make life anew. They challenge us to experience, to remember, to relate. They drive us to reach for the stars, and make us believe that this time, we just might grab them. Technology in the arts is important because it allows creatives and media outlets such as Artists Pages to stand on the shoulders of giants and set the cornerstone for future generations.
In support of activism
Another important aspect of art that Artists Pages highlights is its potential for community building and activism. Art is, in many ways, the soul of a culture and its people’s lived experiences. There is a reason why people with power who seek to destroy communities through isolation and control work to erase the arts. They do it because art is knowledge, a shared understanding, a language, a feeling. It is a powerful tool of resistance and of connection. The ‘Art of a Postcard’ initiative that Artists Pages promotes is just one of the many examples of the power of art in action, according to Ange Bell, one of its many contributors.
Dying Artforms
Platforms and media like Artists Pages are important because they bring dying traditions, art forms, and crafts into the public eye. They can ensure that the ingenuity of people’s past is not forgotten by the future, allowing arts both old and new to continue forward together. Art is not simply a product, it is an experience, a practice, and a purpose. Artists Pages works to ensure that the art of our time is never reduced to the simple remains, after its form as a living craft is dead. The destination only really means something after the journey to get there. A piece of writing means far less to a reader if they have never learned the language. The work of Denis Di Luca is a case of one such art form.
Ingenuity in Art
Art is the act of ingenious creation. Without a desire to see what could be created, to try something new, there would be no art. There is no right or wrong way to go about it. There are no rules on what materials or methods can be used. Art is a constantly changing landscape. Often, an artist will come along and do something in some way that no one has done before. Mixing creative disciplines and the accompanying techniques together to stunning effect is one such way that artists innovate. Thredrick Couler, who creates detailed portraiture and illustrations with a sewing machine using thread and cloth to make wearable art, is an excellent example of this practice.
Of course, not all ingenuity is born from mixing disciplines. Sometimes, interesting art is the result of a happy accident that lights the spark of inspiration. When something has broken beyond repair, when a tool can no longer serve its original purpose, a little inventiveness might be all that is needed to breathe it to life once more. As Artists Pages shows, Robert Strati is more than familiar with this aspect of artistic creation and expression. He has found a way to preserve broken china in his art through his keen eye for detail and steady hand, which results is visually interesting multi-dimensional pieces.
Art in the Modern World
Each of the people above, and every other creative that Artists Pages draws attention to, is a living artist. Someone from our era, our generation, who dares to invent, to innovate, to dream. They look to the future unblinking, despite living in a world where disaster, death, and misery are a click of a button away. And now, more than ever, it is important to support them. Whether they a featured in art galleries, or social media feeds, whether they are backed by voices like Artists Pages or work independently.
Art is like hope. It exists in the darkest of times, in the darkest of places. Art gives people the strength to go on when they have nothing more to take; it is a guiding light in times of trouble. In one form or another, in one mind or another, it will always persevere. But like hope, art is something we have to fight for, to feed, to grow, and to share. Art is the silent protest, the call sign of rebellion, the voice of the masses. Art is feeling the fear and doing it anyway in the hope of something better.
