Christina Madden

Web Design Client Updates for January 2014

Posted by Hannah West

I wanted to let people know about my Web Design Client Updates and additional news for January 2014.  I’ve been busy and it looks like I’ll be getting busier as word continues to spread about my web design skills and work ethic.

Fly Fishing, painting by new web design client, artist Joan Pechanec
Fly Fishing, painting by Joan Pechanec ~ Click to see more on Joan’s new website!

New Web Design Client, Artist Joan Pechanec

First, it’s lovely to announce the completion of a new artist website for Joan Pechanec of Mt Shasta, California. The website is built on the WordPress platform, using the Emphaino theme with lots of custom modifications so the resulting site design would suit her aesthetics. She had a budget and a target completion date in mind, and we finished under budget and on time. She has art works in two categories on her site – assemblage/collage pieces and more recent oil paintings. As she and her husband, author Charlie Price, were on their way out of town for a 3 month writer’s residency at Fairhope on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, it was perfect that they were both able to come up and meet me in person before they left. Working with Joan by remote (a good bit of it while they were on the road to their destination) went smoothly and I’m delighted that both she and her husband are pleased with the results!

Joan wanted visitors to her website to be able to see all the works on her home page, so we chose a theme that’s designed with the masonry technique (like Pinterest), yet with a dark background that really makes the saturated colors in her paintings pop. The masonry style image blocks on the home page are each linked to a post with more details about the painting. Since she will be away for a while, we decided to post the paintings with just the most essential details for now. It was a joy working with Joan’s art! We’ll add text and artist’s comments when she returns home, along with the new paintings she is creating while on the Gulf Coast. I hope you will visit joanpechanec.com and have a look!

Website Update for Artist Christina Madden

Web Design Client Update: Adding 'Nature's Views,' mixed media painting by Christina Madden, to www.christinamadden.com
Nature’s Views, mixed media painting by Christina Madden
Web Design Client Update: 'Adding Autumn at the Green Springs,' oil painting by Christina Madden, to www.christinamadden.com
Autumn at the Green Springs, oil painting by Christina Madden

 

Artist Christina Madden has been painting away since I last wrote, and these two pieces are among my favorites of the new works we have recently updated her website with. The two seem to bookend the range of her style; both are landscapes, but one is a bright and colorful mixed media painting in a more abstract style, the other an oil painting in an impressionist style, with colors a bit more subdued than we usually see from her hand. Christina is working hard to create a style that’s all her own, and it appears to me that she’s succeeding. She’s very excited because she will be going to ArtExpo in New York City this year! It’s been wonderful to watch her style grow and change since we began working together, and I know she will be successful at this prestigious New York show.

Bill Stanton’s Art Exhibit at the GoodBean Cafe

Landscape, by Bill Stanton, on display at the Goodbean Cafe in Jacksonville, Oregon until January 31, 2014
Landscape, 4′ x 4′ oil on canvas by Bill Stanton

I’m sure I must have mentioned that among the things I do to have some regular in-person facetime with artists and their work is curating and managing the art exhibits at the GoodBean Cafe in my hometown of Jacksonville, Oregon. December was a group show with the theme of “Angels,” which drew great enthusiasm from the shop’s clientele, so much so that the owner decided she wants to do the same theme every December from now on! This month we’re featuring artist Bill Stanton, whose landscapes painted in deep impasto oils are in high demand in the area. Bill isn’t entirely reclusive, but he doesn’t do a lot of shows or promotion…it’s mostly locals who are in the know who support his work…so we’re fortunate to have him. We would love it if you could come in and see them for yourself – we just renovated the back wall to make more room for the art, and his large (some huge) paintings look terrific in the space! If you’re not in the area, take a look at this post about the show to learn more.

Web Design Projects in Development and Coming Soon

That’s all I have completed and ready for you to view right now…though I’m working on a bunch of other projects that will be ready soon:

  • Helping Stefan Baumann complete his artist website

    • Stefan started on his own, but became too busy to finish the project himself. In addition to a grueling art instruction schedul which involves a lot of travel, he’s painting like crazy to prepare for a big southern California show in September. Want to watch as Baumann’s website develops? Visit www.stefanbaumann.com

  • New concert posters, video editing and website updates for Christina Duane’s Romancing the West 2014 tour.

  • Redesigning the website for Community Works

    • Community Works is the parent organization for the highly respected Dunn House in Medford, Oregon, which helps women, youth and families impacted by domestic abuse and sexual violence. I am delighted to be working with Development Director Misha Levee Hernandez on this project. (Need help yourself? Visit their current website here. )

  • Updating artist Pegi Smith‘s existing website with new paintings.

    • As with Christina Madden, I did not design Pegi’s site, but her previous webmistress is stepping aside from website work and Pegi brought her maintenance work to me just yesterday! I can’t wait to work with her beautiful paintings! pegismith.com

In addition, I’m beside myself with glee that I’ve gotten two new web design projects to begin soon. One is an artist website. Just yesterday I went to visit this artist’s studio and nearly wept at the beautiful work I saw there! We should be getting underway soon. The other is a WordPress based wine club website. I will hear for sure on that one Friday, and we should be getting started around the 27th if it’s confirmed tomorrow that it’s a go.

I hope you’ll check back again to see my very erratic updates on how things are going with these web design and site maintenance projects, and more!

Latest updates…

Posted by Hannah West

It’s so hard to keep this site updated when there are so many interesting (and challenging!) projects to tend to, so here’s a quick recap of a few of the things I’ve been working on.

"Master Wave," oil on canvas painting of a large wave breaking on the shore by Boni de Laire
“Master Wave,” oil on canvas by Boni de Laire
"Still Life with Red Oriental Poppies," oil on canvas by Billye Woodford
“Still Life with Red Oriental Poppies,” oil on canvas by Billye Woodford

 

Just after I finished the restoration of a site for Medford artist Boni de Laire, she referred another wonderful painter to me, Billye Woodford from Rogue River, Oregon. I have just finished her site, too. They’re both beautiful, and filled with lovely artwork – representational landscapes are Boni’s focus, and while Billye creates beautiful landscapes as well, she also ventures into florals, portraits and more. Please visit www.bonidelaire.net and www.billyewoodford.com today!

While I was finishing up Billye’s site, another interesting job came my way – a website for a contestant in the upcoming Miss Oregon pageant, Priyanka Samra. Born in Canada and raised in Medford Oregon, Priyanka is a college student in California majoring in pre-med. She’ll gradute at the end of the current school year. She’s also incredibly beautiful and has been modeling since she was 14 – with a special love for the runway. She’s going to be teaching runway lessons to other models to raise funds for her favorite charities – Unique Home for Girls in India, where girls who have been abandoned are given a home, education and a future under the loving guardianship of

Model Priyanka Samra
Model Priyanka Samra

their adopted mother Prakash Kaur, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), specifically for their important work on depression. Please visit www.priyankasamra.com to learn more and see the modeling shots in her portfolio gallery…and root for her to win Miss Oregon 2014! She wanted a site based on her friend Mabelynn’s. Mabelynn won the Miss California pageant in 2012 and her site is pretty sleek, so I went for it. As pretty as Mabelynn is, I think Priyanka’s exotic East Indian look, movie-star glamorous yet not excessively sexy, makes her site the winner. Follow her for news on the Miss Oregon pageant, which happens in November.

"Sunrise on the Rhine," mixed media on canvas by artist Christina Madden depicting a castle on the Rhine River in Europe
“Sunrise on the Rhine,” mixed media on canvas by artist Christina Madden

A couple of my artist clients have added new paintings to their websites recently.

Christina Madden paints in oil, acrylic and mixed media; her range of style and subject is quite broad, but recently she’s been refining her style to make it all her own. And is it ever! Her colorful abstract impressionist landscapes are so vibrant and full of life, like nothing else I’ve seen. We’ve also been working to improve the SEO value of her site and making progress. Help her gain better online visibility! Visit her website and feast your eyes on artist Christina Madden‘s colorful world! If you find yourself in Ashland, Oregon during October 2013, stop in at Art & Soul gallery to see a major show of her paintings. She sold ten paintings in recent months, so she had to work very hard to paint new pieces so she would have enough for her show, and they’re magnificent! Meet the artist at a reception on Friday, October 4 during the Ashland First Friday Art Walk.

"Boss," oil on wood by Eugenia Talbott of Talbott Studios
“Boss,” oil on wood by Eugenia Talbott of Talbott Studios

Artist Eugenia Talbot is an amazing woman, and she just had two shows here in southern Oregon – one at the Berryman Gallery (above the Craterian Theater in Medford) in conjunction with the production of Tarzan there in early September. At the same time I had her work hanging at the GoodBean Cafe in Jacksonville for a one month exhibition that got huge numbers of compliments! I didn’t design her site, but she brought me on for maintenance and updates, as well as to upgrade its SEO value. Once again I appeal to what readers I may have to help increase her online visibility by visiting her Talbott Studios website and take some time to look around. You won’t be disappointed – African wildlife, horses and pet portraits, portraits of people and more await you there!

Susan DeRosa art show card for South Stage Cellars show, September 2013
Susan DeRosa art show card for South Stage Cellars show, September 2013

Oh, and you must see the art show card that Jacksonville artist Susan DeRosa had me make for her debut southern Oregon show (she moved here recently from Arkansas, where she lived for a time after retiring from her career as an art educator in California universities). She is such an amazing talent, I’m glad she now has time to continue refining her own work rather now that she’s done her time teaching others! Her show at South Stage Cellars was such a success, she sold a painting at the opening reception and so many people came that she started crying with gratitude when telling me how she felt about it.

This reminds me of the art show catalog I did recently, but I haven’t had a chance to scan it so I’ll have to post that later.

Apologies to the awesome folks at GMO Free Jackson County for not having time to have them with a project they contacted me about. Please visit their website and lend your support – they working hard to protect Oregon’s organic agriculture legacy. It’s like swimming upstream, there’s so much to do and so much resistance from the likes of Monsanto and Syngenta.

Well, there’s still more, but I’ve run out of time and have to get back to work, so please return another time to see if I’ve had a chance to write more about the fabulous projects I’m involved in now, and what my wonderful clients have for me next! Spoiler alert…looks like a new site and SEO help for Daljit Samra (Name sounds familiar? Yes, that’s Priyanka’s mom!) of the Rogue Valley Inn and possibly some modifications to a fantastic high end fashion site in New York, as well as adding video content to singer/songwriter Christina Duane’s nonprofit websites, Romancing the West and Oh Oregon Frontier Park when she returns from her current tour! Oh, right, I haven’t written about the pleasure of starting to work with Christina yet, have I? Well, we’ll have to tackle that next time…Thanks for stopping by and come back again soon!

 

Site Update for Artist Christina Madden!

Posted by Hannah West

I’m so grateful to have had artist Christina Madden come to me for help bringing more visitors to her website!

La Casa, oil painting by Christina Madden
La Casa, oil painting by Christina Madden

The first thing we did was to add metadata to all the images of her art, both for security’s sake and to help promote her art. While the metadata contained within an image is not readable by search engines, it’s essential to have it in place in the event that it, through resharing, it becomes separated from any link to the artist’s website or other contact information. It’s always an option to lock down an image so it cannot be separated from the website where it appears, but then people can’t help you promote your work by sharing, so this way anyone can open the image in Photoshop, access the File Info, and see the artist’s website address so they can see more of their work, find their email and other contact information, and learn more about the artist. Christina’s choice was to allow her images to be shared, so the metadata was a must. This also saves time when adding images to social networks, as the most critical of the meta information – the artist’s copyright – will now be “exposed”, along with the title and description so it does not have to be retyped in. This also makes the metadata available to the search engines, an added bonus and a good reason to take the time to place this information in each image. And What a joy to work with the images of her beautiful oil paintings!

Next we added metadata keywords and descriptions to her pages for the search engines to gobble up, and AddThis sharing tools to her website to encourage visitors to share her pages. We also added a sitemap and Google analytics tracking code to her site and, though the site has been online for some time, submitted it to the search engines as this had not been done previously. In the process I saw that the code on her site was very outdated, and began the process of bringing it a bit more up to speed so it will be more search engine friendly. Completing this task for the entire site will take longer and we plan to take it a little at a time; we also will add proper text with keywords to the “Alt” field in her images.

Morning at Touvelle Park, oil painting by Christina Madden
Morning at Touvelle Park, oil painting by Christina Madden

Christina had started a professional artist page on Facebook but hadn’t completed the setup, so we added a selection of paintings to her page and began promoting it. While working on this, she completed two new paintings, which we added to her website and Facebook page. Boy did they get a lot of attention! Over 200 views for one painting and almost 350 for the other, plus lots of wonderful comments! She’s up to 38 likes now, but it still needs some love, so why not visit and add your own like to her page?! https://www.facebook.com/artistchristinamadden

We began working on March 5 and completed this round on April 21. Currently Christina’s site is appearing in search results on Bing/Yahoo 94% more frequently than it did before, with a 200% increase in clicks from those search result pages, and all but 5 of her pages have been properly indexed by Google. Christina can now view traffic analytics for her site through her Google account and sharing analytics through her new AddThis account. In the past month (April 8 – May 8), she has welcomed 55 visitors to her site, who viewed 266 pages, and average of nearly 5 pages per visit! This represents an 89.66% increase in visitors over the previous month, a 48.6% increase in page views, and, though the total number of pages per visit is down a little, and increase in time spent on her website of 79.5%!

In addition we can see that , although most of her visitors are coming from her home territory of southern Oregon, people from 8 different countries have come to visit since we began working. Sharing has not been intense, nor has anything gone viral just yet, but 5 shares, up from zero ability to share, is promising,  and we can see that all the shares so far have been to Facebook. As these results show, search engine optimization, even if not complete, can immediately and dramatically change the visitor frequency and patterns to your website, and the ability to view and analyze these stats is very helpful to gauge how much the work you have put into optimizing your site is helping to increase traffic and sharing.