It started in 2013, when Ekaterina Popova — a recent BFA graduate who had just been rejected from yet another job — decided to build the platform she wished existed. With no experience in publishing and no background in design, she launched what was then called Fresh Paint Magazine, a small indie zine devoted to emerging contemporary artists. The leap of faith paid off. Twelve years and a rebrand later, Create! Magazine has grown into a women-owned, artist-run publishing operation with over 260,000 Instagram followers, 54 issues, two published books on creative entrepreneurship, a million-download podcast, and partnerships with art fairs from Art Miami to Affordable Art Fair.
Each issue is assembled through an open call for artists, juried by a rotating guest curator — COHLE Gallery in Paris, TAX Collection, Square One Gallery in St. Louis, Danielle Krysa of The Jealous Curator. Between 30 and 50 artists are selected per edition, each receiving a custom-designed spread with biography, images, and website. The magazine publishes four to five issues per year, printed in the US in limited runs, and reaches curators, collectors, gallery directors, and arts professionals worldwide. For many featured artists, it is their first significant print publication — and often the beginning of a larger conversation with the commercial art world.
Beyond the magazine, Popova and co-founder Alicia Puig of PxP Contemporary have built an ecosystem: the Create! Podcast with over a million downloads; two books — The Complete Smartist Guide and The Creative Business Handbook; an online membership community called Art Queens; and the AQ Quarterly, a hardcover catalogue celebrating women and non-binary artists. The whole enterprise runs on a simple conviction: the art world does not need more gatekeeping. It needs more doors.
Featured in the New York Post, Colossal, Apartment Therapy, My Modern Met, and on Monocle Radio, Create! Magazine has proven that a zine born from one artist’s frustration with the system can become the system’s most welcoming alternative. For the artists in its pages, that matters.
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