“I am a professional visual artist working full time since 2014 and living on Skidaway Island, Georgia. I had met Robin Reynolds in the MFA Grad Program at SCAD (Savannah) and we reconnected about 8 years ago on Instagram. Robin is a highly successful painter living and working in Massachusetts and told me about a start-up mag called Juniper Rag. I responded to an open call and was received nicely with all the appropriate write-ups, advocacy, and social media plugs. At this point in my career, I was only interested in competitions and museum shows that were regional...not galleries. Sales were limited and word of mouth. As I moved forward I started expanding to connecting to national Galleries in Florida, Colorado, Memphis, Hilton Head and now California. Juniper Rag became the impetus to measure audience response to my work and through that encouraged me to branch out and even focus on more specific content. They always featured my upcoming shows and new work consistently on Social Media as well. The Magazine founders have always been outstanding advocates for the Arts and their reach extends to the West Coast and beyond. I have become Instagram "friends" with several of the artists featured on Juniper Rag. The editors also did a piece on a Residency I attended in Ireland, which became sort of an international outreach. I am pretty proactive in my approach for new audiences and Juniper Rag has been the positive impetus to make many of those needed connections. My relationship with Juniper Rag and the founders has been very organic, but also something I highly value and treasure. It will be very interesting to see where they and their audience go from here." —Randy Akers, Skidaway Island, Georgia