Recommendations

Jesa is an extraordinary networker and strategist. She deployed her talents at Hickory to grow innovative opportunities and partnerships for our organization in an emerging, uncharted field. Jesa is imaginative, effective, organized, and great fun to work with. She has just the right balance of awesome persistence and humor to move projects through their various challenges and on to actualization.

Jesa is a sparklingly intelligent, contemporary-minded thought-partner who can see and articulate elements of my business that I cannot. She went from knowing me not at all to enthusiastically learning – and retaining – a tremendous amount of data about my work and path so far. Her strategic recommendations about next steps are well-informed and helpful.

Jesa was the fulcrum to leverage me from someone who made art to being an artist. She shines the light on my particular path of growth, and applies the things I already know about marketing in a business sense towards marketing my own work. Jesa allows me to pull the pieces of the puzzle together into a comprehensive marketing mindset, which allows me to convey what’s exciting about my work to a listening audience.

Jesa’s comprehensive knowledge of the arts in Boston and beyond is unmatched locally and her abilities as an organizer and marketer are off the chart. Jesa understands how to get the word out about a wide range of artists and projects, while maintaining the artists’ integrity. I send everyone who needs arts marketing, is looking for a collaborator for a creative project, or just wants to know more about what’s going on in the Boston arts to Jesa.

I have personally witnessed Jesa Damora in diverse and complex settings… In every case, Jesa has exhibited professionalism and incredible diligence.

Eventually we worked together in the Hickory Consortium, a collection organized for a Department of Energy grant on energy efficient production housing. The group of architects and engineers, suppliers and manufacturers performed together for the DOE for many years and consisted of 10 or more separate consultants. Again, Jesa’s skills at understanding the complexities of the dynamic systems at work, and her people skills made her the obvious choice for directing the group. During her tenure at Hickory, she also successfully marketed sustainability, making Erie Ellington Homes and Cambridge Cohousing virtually household names both regionally and nationally as some of the first truly healthy, sustainable, and affordable housing projects.

Jesa’s expertise and experience in the arts world has greatly assisted the growth of my own business and various endeavors in multimedia. She has kept me on task, helping me to meet deadlines, and is full of ideas for connecting with others and promoting my brand. She has kept me organized and enthusiastic about my goals with weekly conversations and progress reports. She is more than generous when it comes to sharing her network of many well known contacts. Jesa also arranged a performance opportunity for me at a TEDx event and even traveled to a NYC performance of mine with a colleague of hers to support me. I highly recommend her consulting services for any artist or small business owner who aims to bring their progress to the next level.

Jesa Damora clearly loves what she does as is indicated through her enthusiasm, knowledge and endless network of colleagues. She helped me land and market my solo show in Boston at Rafius Fane Gallery in SoWA.

She has advised me one-on-one on my business as a artist/painter since 2014, and I’ve found her expertise and connections have been key in generating good relationships with people in the art world.

If you are looking to expand your art business into a successful career, Jesa has the tools you need, whether you are just getting started, needing inspiration, or need support, she is energetic, knowledgeable, readily available, and extremely encouraging every step of the way. Her insights and sincere dedication to her craft are invaluable.

Jesa is a seasoned marketing pro, period. In my capacity as President of the Board of Directors of Somerville Open Studios, I’ve seen Jesa’s persistent, positive determination result in major newspaper and radio placements exceeding all expectations for getting our arts event stories “out there”.

She also organized marketing talks for artists that both built the sense of community within our organization as well as provided valuable knowledge and guidance to our members who are serious about taking their artist life to the next level. I highly recommend her for any organization seeking to raise their profile and any individual ready to step up their creative career. A tour de force who has proven her value to us many times over. Thanks, Jesa!

My classical woodwind quintet (Vento Chiaro) hired Jesa to develop a marketing plan and execute some pieces of it for a grant-funded set of performances. Throughout the process, Jesa was clear about what needed to happen and what she could do for us. The marketing plan she designed was beautiful, creative, thorough, and clear. It motivated us to do much more than we thought possible and helped us prioritize our efforts given our limited time and resources.

Jesa delivered high quality content in a timely fashion and with a smile. She supported us in ways above and beyond our expectations, and taught us marketing techniques and approaches we needed to know to be successful. At the conclusion of the project, Jesa left us set up well to move forward. Jesa is a positive, joyful, encouraging, and highly creative person.

We brought Jesa to Brooklyn to work with our group of 200+ artists as we prepared for Gowanus Open Studios. She facilitated 5 workshops about a variety of marketing topics for artists. First, her facilitation skills are wonderful and interactive and include audience participation, making the workshops worthwhile for the folks in the room.

Second, her knowledge of the art world and how to approach a variety of situations and how to make the most of these situations was insightful and helpful. Many artists came to every single workshop, many implemented her suggestions, and many have followed up to work with her individually on their art marketing practice. Jesa’s experience and warm presence made this workshop series a huge success.

Jesa Damora’s arts/marketing service has been a gift, moving me towards my goal and expanding my network. She is easy to work with, listens,and possesses authority. Her broad knowledge base of both art history and the pulse of what’s happening now makes her a perfect advisor. From Day One Damora (aka Funnel Cake Marketing) refined my sculpture presentation and helped define the strength of my work as well as recommend sensible, professional pricing. Together we concentrated on development of a particular body of work.

My goal is to get a show. Each week we set assignments to move closer to that goal ( BTW from the start I knew this was not possible to accomplish in three months). Assignments included finishing work in the studio, submitting work to galleries, contacting journalists, becoming more social media savvy, writing blurbs.

Damora has noteworthy connections to other artists, web designers, engineers, lighting specialists, musicians; she’s a graceful editor.

Jesa has been extremely useful in my art career as artist-wrangler, marketer, advisor and visual navigator. Her role has been to steer me through the steps I’ve needed to launch myself into the local art scene and build my business as an emerging artist. She is knowledgeable, energetic and extremely passionate about the arts. She has pushed me when I needed her to, but has always maintained a respectful and fun relationship. She doesn’t shy away from straight talk and getting to the meat of a situation, but Jesa adapts to her clients’ needs and I always feel like she has my back and will promote me whenever she gets the chance.

It is refreshing to work with somebody who has inside knowledge of the art world from both sides of the fence – the fact that Jesa also happens to be a fantastic visual artist herself really allows me to trust her aesthetic skills as well as her marketing prowess. I have been working with Jesa long enough to see the fruits of our mutual labor.

I’d like to recommend Jesa Damora’s services to artists and makers who are looking to kick things up a bit, in order to reach more people, either viewers, clients or customers. We worked together over several months to tweak things on my social media and marketing side, and to try to bring some cohesion to my wildly-varied subject matter and physical production. She’s flexible, takes each case individually, and can work within an artist’s budget.

I highly recommend working with Jesa. She is phenomenal at helping an artist reach the next stage in their career. As an artist herself she understand the challenges we face. She is very thoughtful in her approach and really customizes her approach to each artist’s needs. She is great at finding where you need the most support, and creating a concrete plan to reach the next level in your art career, whether you are emerging or well established.

Jesa is an extremely knowledgeable, sweet and vivacious woman who puts her heart into helping artists find their path. As an artist herself, she understands the logistical, financial and emotional challenges to an art life and works with you as an artist to maneuver through your own circumstances to expand and achieve your goals. She’s left me with a lasting and personalized understanding of the steps required to make an art life.

For me, working full-time and being young in my art path, engaging Jesa was extremely helpful for getting a full scope of what it would take to be a professional artist. Besides doing the work itself, there are important aspects of marketing, administration and legwork for which Jesa gave me a much fuller picture. Through working with her, I achieved a milestone of creating, framing, and showing four pieces at a Chelsea gallery in NY, my first gallery show.

I would highly recommend Jesa, for her knowledge of the full spectrum of art making, her connections to artists in the Boston area, and her warm, fun-loving and empathic personality.

My only regret about working with Jesa was not working with her sooner! I’ve been solo contracting as a product designer and maker for years and had been struggling with setting achievable goals. Jesa helped me prioritize and focus, so I could get to work on what really matters. She really figured out what I needed as a coach and mentor, and helped me craft an actionable plan towards my longer term goals. Her support, expertise, and connections have been invaluable to my career.