Jean Kelly Art Studio
A gallery-first website for a Vermont painter and printmaker. The artist can update the catalogue, events, posts, and site-wide settings through a browser, without writing code or waiting for a developer. Visitors can browse a curated catalogue and filter it by the details that matter to them.
The design problem was restraint: let the work carry the page, while making filters, details, and pricing feel like a gallery label rather than a database.
The challenge
The site had to do three jobs at once: present the catalogue attractively, let a non-technical owner keep it current, and support the commercial reality of an actively working artist — dimensions, framing, availability, and price. Paintings span media, sizes, years, and statuses, so a visitor needs to browse by medium and tag without losing the sense of a curated body of work.
Two practical constraints sat underneath: photographs of paintings arrive as large phone or camera files and must not slow the site down; and the rules for each piece must stay consistent whether the artist edits a work in the browser or I update the site.
What we built
- Art catalogue — each work carries title, medium, dimensions, year and month, main image, tags, status, framing, price, and descriptive notes. Thirteen medium values are available, and the filters come from the catalogue itself, so a new medium needs no code change.
- Honest commercial metadata — status tracks available, sold, private collection, and exhibition, with price optional so a work can be shown without a public figure. Unpriced works read “Price on request” rather than an empty number.
- Editorial surfaces — a home page with an upcoming-events strip and a medium-filtered recent-work gallery, an about page, and blog posts with tags and a feed readers can follow, kept with the site so they can be enabled when needed.
- A browser-based editor that follows the same content rules as the website, so the artist can add a painting, publish a post, or list an event without a developer.
- One home for images — uploads land in one place and are used from there, with a batch helper that converts incoming phone photos to a web-friendly format.
Outcome
The artist maintains the catalogue herself: adding work, marking a piece sold or in a private collection, and editing site-wide settings without a developer or a local setup. The catalogue is built from structured entries rather than a folder of loose images, and the filters come from the catalogue, so they cannot contradict the results.
The website, the editing tool, and the supporting files follow one set of rules, so the checks, the content, and the editing screen stay in step.