postMedium: The Online Artist Portfolio Engine

You can find the most beautiful artwork on the streets of New Orleans, sometimes on sidewalks or hanging in cozy shops.  Even the guys that hang their paintings off the gates of Jackson Square bring to mind the memories of how New Orleans artists have always told our story.

Two NOLA artists, one a graphic designer another a web developer want to infuse the cities art scene with the power of the Internet by providing an online artist portfolio engine dubbed postMedium.  Created by Erik Kiesewetter & Rami Sharkey, postMedium is an online system that would allow artist to have a digital art gallery.  According to the postMedium site, most artists are without the time, money, knowledge or resources to establish an effective online web presence.  With the systems portfolio management tool, artists can update their online portfolios, add new content and images, and take control of their online presence.

To bring this idea to fruition, the dual is using kickstarter, a website that allows people to donate money to their project to get it off the ground.  We talked to Erik & Rami about postMedium, their vision, and what artists will get out of it.

Q&A From postMedium’s Creators

Q:  You say that postMedium is an “online artist portfolio engine”.  What type of artist would this be geared toward? (e.g. musicians, painters, web designers)

A: Our focus is primarily visual artists or arts organizations that need to display their work online.  The system is not built to accommodate musicians, but there is always a possibility as the system grows in the future.

Q: What is the goal of postMedium?

Screenshot of postMedium System

A: The goal of postMedium is to provide New Orleans artists and art organizations with a free or affordable means of having their own online portfolio and be able to have complete control over it. We realize there are limited resources available to these artists, and we aim to help our growing community.

Q: What do artists get out of postMedium?

A: By artists having their own postMedium site, they will have the opportunity to display, and market themselves online, as well as having e-commerce capabilities. They will also be able to update their news, events, post new work and videos, update galleries, create links and representation as well as add a brief artist statement and append their CV. We take care of hosting their portfolios as well.

Q: Why did you all choose kickStarter as a platform to raise funds?

A: We were aware of kickstarter through friends who had successfully raised funds, and we thought we would give it a shot.  We’re really just using it to help out with some server costs. It is not our only source of funding.

Q:  What are your future plans for postMedium if the project does not get funded or does get funded?

A:  We are going to move forward regardless of whether we get more funding or not. Obviously funding just makes things a lot easier.  We also aim to have a beta launched by late spring 2010. Eventually, we would like to expand on the provided services and continually improve on the system.

See more detailed information and screen shots of the system at http://postmedium.org/.  You can also donate to this cause at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/postmedium/postmedium-portfolios-for-new-orleans-artists