For many artists, the work does not end with a finished painting or print. Much of their time goes into tracking sales, communicating with contacts and handling the management behind their art.
For many, that work can feel like running a small business. Beyond creating, artists need to use a mix of tools like spreadsheets, website builders and accounting software. Sometimes they spend as much time behind a screen as in the studio.
That is the problem Somerville artist Liv Cappello set out to solve. A painter and web developer, Cappello built Gesso, a platform launching May 1 that combines tools for managing artwork, tracking sales and maintaining a portfolio website in one place. Though platforms for managing artwork and sales exist, many are designed for galleries and larger operations, or require artists to piece together multiple tools.
“It’s a ton more admin work than people might think,” Cappello said. “It’s a lot about tracking your art, making sure your pricing adds up and it’s consistent, collecting email lists, managing contacts and relationships and tracking pricing expenses, all of that.”
As Cappello became more serious about her art practice, she said she realized how difficult it was to manage the administrative work across multiple systems and decided to build a single platform to handle those tasks.
“I was paying to host my website on Squarespace and use the commerce tool for that … tracking my sales and expenses in a different spreadsheet [and] QuickBooks for other things,” she said. “The subscription costs really started adding up, so I got sick of dealing with all of that.”
Cappello began by building a simple website for her work, then expanded it to bring different parts of her practice into one system. And the challenges she faced were not unique to her.
“For people in the arts, there could possibly be a perception that being an artist just means you’re painting every day and that’s it,” said Julia Emiliani, a Somerville illustrator who was a beta tester of Gesso. “It’s not really the case, it’s just a fraction of what you do. A lot of it is not as glamorous, behind-the-scenes work that’s a lot to manage.”
Emiliani, who has been practicing art for 11 years and works as a full-time illustrator and designer, said tools like Gesso could help ease that balance by reducing the time spent on administrative work.
“Every artist probably wishes they had more time to make the work, because that’s why you get into it,” Emiliani said. “Obviously, you don’t get into it to calculate prices and send emails. You like to paint, you like to draw.”
As Cappello developed the platform, she gathered feedback from a group of 14 artists including Emiliani to refine its features.
“I set up a system for testers where they can submit feedback through the platform whenever,” she said. “I’ve had about 30 or 40 different comments and features that I’ve kind of tweaked because of that.”
That feedback helped expand the platform beyond Cappello’s own experience as a painter. Suggestions from beta testers led to new features, including tools to track freelance illustration work, manage class offerings and create templates for common communications with clients and collectors.
“There are only so many things I can do based on my practice, because this is built out of something that was a direct response to my needs,” Cappello said. “[Having] other people’s perspectives and their different practices, that’s kind of been what’s so valuable.”
Faye Dupras, a Somerville filmmaker and puppeteer, said the platform brings together tools artists often use separately in a more cost-effective way. She said its design also makes it accessible to artists with different levels of familiarity with technology.
“The way it organizes information is very user-friendly, and I think that’s important for artists,” she said. “You might have a more senior artist who is really strong in their craft but not as comfortable navigating online platforms, and [Liv is] making it so they can still use it.”
Cappello said after she launches Gesso she will introduce it to other artists in the community facing similar challenges. She said the goal is to make that process easier so artists can focus more on creating.
“It’s scary to put something into the world that I’ve worked really hard on, but I think it could be a really helpful tool for people [so] I’m really excited,” she said. “It’s kind of like sending your kid off to college.”
This story is part of a partnership between Cambridge Day and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
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