A dark portfolio for an artist who paints the dark
An editorial portfolio that treats the work the way galleries do, not the way templates do.
Nelle Ferrara is a fine artist whose paintings sit somewhere between portraiture and dread. The portfolio had to hold that weight without dressing it up. No light theme cosplay, no horror tropes — a quiet gallery with a heavy door.
What was going on
Most artist portfolios are either Squarespace cookie-cutters or so opaque you can't find the email address. The brief was a third option: editorial, dark, generous with whitespace, but built so a working artist can update it without re-learning a CMS.
How I worked it
- 01
Dark theme as a serious choice, not a costume. Type and contrast tuned for sustained reading on a phone or a 27-inch monitor; no neon, no glow.
- 02
Image-first IA. Each work gets a real page with the title, dimensions, medium, and the artist's note. Series group, but never crop the hero.
- 03
AR view via model-viewer for the sculpture work — buyers see scale on their own wall before asking the price.
- 04
PHP-backed contact form on Cloudways so we could ship without a separate API. Simple beats clever when the artist owns the maintenance.
The parts worth naming
- Work page template
One component, used for every painting and sculpture. Variants drive the AR module, the diptych layout, and the sold-state.
- Series index
Editorial groupings (Reliquary, Sleepers, Petals) without forcing every piece into a series.
- Sold-state UX
Sold pieces stay visible so the catalog reads as a body of work, not a stock list.
What shipped
Site is in pre-launch with the artist; final pieces and bios are landing in waves. Performance and motion stay restrained so the work leads.
- Domain
- nelleferrara.com
- Theme
- Dark · editorial · no glow
- AR viewer
- model-viewer · sculptures
- Stock people photos
- Zero