ARCHIVES featured in Country Roads Magazine

The Cover of Country Roads Magazine June Visual Arts Issue, featuring ARCHIVES

The ARCHIVES team wants to extend a heartfelt thank you to Country Roads and Shanna Dickens for the lovely article featured on the cover today in Country Roads Magazine! To read the full article, click the button below. It covers the conception of ARCHIVES, our mission, and the stories and ideas that brought us to that mission.

Read the Article

Some of our favorite excerpts:

"The stereotype of the starving artist has long been romanticized, glorifying the struggle to survive in the name of artmaking. But what if the system were reimagined, and a community built to support the process, nurturing artists at every stage of their journey? What if the work of artists weren’t canonically rife with financial struggle? What more—and more liberated—art might exist? This dynamic is part of what Lafayette artists Emma Sonnier and Lex R. Thomas set out to explore when they co-founded ARCHIVES Exhibitions." - Shanna Dickens

"While the creative energy in the Acadiana region is abundant, support for early- to mid-career artists can be scarce. "In Acadiana, you can’t help but come into close contact with someone who participates in the arts," said Thomas. "We have an incredible number of contemporary artists occupying a relatively small area, but without the extensive resources of a metro city." - Lex R. Thomas

"From the start, Sonnier and Thomas understood that addressing the needs of artists would require more than guesswork; it would take intention. “Rather than creating events in isolation, we actively seek input from our community to ensure our programming reflects what people truly want, rather than assuming what they need,” Sonnier said. That collaborative spirit is grounded in three guiding principles: connection, visibility, and compensation. In practice, that mission takes shape through thoughtfully designed community gatherings, professional showcases, and stipends that place value on artists' time and work." - Shanna Dickens