The ArtKlick Blog

Hi guys, sorry it has taken so long to send out an email to keep you up to date - I have been travelling and moving cities for the past couple of months and used that as an excuse to not learn how to create a newsletter….. Never again.

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The Art Klick Why Not? Gallery
Two months ago I moved to Wellington to work in the Silicon Welly office as it is the place to be if you are a start-up IT company in NZ. Here I am surrounded by eight other new companies all working hard to get off the ground. I also met Teriu Lemon the Programme Director for Digital Media at WelTec and discussed the idea of a design house for graduate graphic desiners, a gallery and “Think Tank”. Within three weeks we had secured a ground floor place of the same building as Silicon Welly - 97-99 Courtenay Place, Te Aro, Wellington (See photos below). The aim is to transform this into a gallery that any member from Art Klick can exhibit in, while giving graphic designers work experience and a place for creatives to come up with crazy ideas - hence - “Why Not?”

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Global Business Network

MadeFromNewZealand.com launched on the 20th October and brought me on as the general Community Manager and have also asked me to develop the arts community within the website which is a huge opportunity for any New Zealand artist.

I highly encourage you to create a profile on Made From New Zealand as an artist and join the Art Klick network. This is a great chance to market yourself for free and be part of a huge vision.

When creating a business profile if you don’t have a website use your Art Klick URL eg www.ArtKlick.co.nz/jamesstewart which will drive traffic to your profile increasing exposure and hopefully result in sales.

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New Website design and marketing
To be honest I haven’t pushed Art Kick any where near as hard as I can as I really want to re-develop it to increase the functionality and features. The main things I want to add to the site are increased prints options, a T Shirt design competetion / printing page and COMMUNITY!!! So just hold tight and early 2009 we will have an amazing new site and market it through all the avenues I have access to now.

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Uncompleted Profiles
We currently have just over 190 members but only 100 of your profiles are visable as you need to add an artwork or print to become visable.

To add an artwork go to Art Klick, log in and click “Add Artwork” at the top of the page.

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Free Art Project
The Free Art Project is an open invitation to anyone attending the New Years event Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne to create a collaborative artwork.

The Concept:

1. Get a 1.5×5m canvas for anyone to do ONE brush stroke (squiqqle, splat, flick etc) on and get a photo of them pointing to their brush stroke.
2. Email the photo of them pointing to their brush stroke.
3. Cut the canvas up into pieces and post them a piece as a souvenir of their 08/09 New Years.
4. This will be a fun project and we hope to encourage accessibility, participation and collaboration of the arts with the public.

• If you are attending R&V and would like to be part of The Free Art Project give me an email and we can hang out

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Get in Touch
It’s an honor to have you signed up to Art Klick, sorry it has taken a bit longer than expected to get things moving but we are definitely making some awesome progress and the new site will be amazing. It’s been a very humbling (and expensive) learning curve!.

If you would like to suggest any ideas or features just flick me an email on james@artklick.com.

If you know any artists or art buyers who you think might be interested in Art Klick please forward this email on to them

All the best for the holiday season,

James Stewart
Art Klick Founder

Phew - it’s been pretty full on for the past couple of months so I thought I would put together a summary of the progress and plans for Art Klick.

Membership
- 140 members signed up with 63 filling out profiles and listing artwork.

Sales
- 5 sales of original artwork, two of which have led to commissions.

Feedback
- The feedback from artists, photographers and developers has been really positive and encouraging.

Tertiary Institutes
- Met with almost all the creative tertiary institutes in New Zealand and they are keen to encourage their students to sign up and profile their art.

Art Klick Moves to Wellington
- On Monday the 29 September I am moving to Wellington to join the growing number of stat-up’s who are working together to inspire, support and learn from each other.

- Wellington is also the place to be for the arts with new things going on all the time. One opportunity that has been presented is to set up the Wellington division of Looksy who are a group of like minded people collaborating to encourage a community of user generated creativeness. They already have their own show on Alt TV so if anyone is keen to get involved get in touch!

- I have also applied to be a company in The Summer of Code program which pairs IT students up with (usually) start-up companies in the industry - giving the student great work experience and the companies an opportunity to expand their scope. Student wages are subsidised by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology which is great. I hope to get a skilled graphic designer and programmer to help re-design Art Klick into a more functional and community based website (See New Design Plans in next post)

Art Klick Blog (this) and Zine
- Now that the North Island trip is over this blog will begin to serve as a resource of articles, interviews and events. Anyone is welcome to contribute - this is a great opportunity for new journalists who are looking to get started. At the moment I can’t afford to pay anyone (I don’t even get paid) but opportunities are sure to arise. If you are passionate about the arts and journalism or if you have something you would like to see covered please feel free to get in touch.

- The Zine will be a free monthly online magazine with the best of the blog posts and events for the coming month. Depending on budget and popularity we hope to turn the Zine into a print magazine with a similar vibe to Juxtapoz and Vice.

Art Klick T-Shirt Design Competition
- What would be a cool New Zealand art website be without an opportunity to get that art on a T-Shirt? We aim to launch a T-Shirt design competition similar to the highly successful model of Threadless which would involve designs being submitted and voted on by the community. The top 5 designs will then be printed as limited edition T’s and sold via the website at an affordable price - and yip - they will be organic

The Free Art Project - Rhythm and Vines 08/09
- The Free Art Project is set to be launched at the New Years music festival Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne. The concept is for as many people as possible to do one brush stroke each on a canvas, take a photo of them pointing to their brush stroke, email them the photo and then post them a piece of the canvas. A T-shirt will also be created of the completed artwork.

- The aim of the project is to get the public involved in the arts, increase brand awareness and have fun. This is just one of the many ideas to get the public involved in contributing to the arts and growing our unique culture.

Art Klick TV
- Video is the way to go - it’s so much more interesting to watch a 3-5 minute video than read a blog post (if you got this far congratulations!). Art Klick TV will include coverage of art events, artist and collector interviews and anything that is relevant to New Zealand art. Anyone that has some good recent footage or would like to submit videos feel free to give me an email - it’s all about community, the more you get involved the more it becomes yours

New Design
- After running the beta version of Art Klick for the past four months I have received some great feedback. Two elements of the site I really want to improve are the community and prints. I will leave this for the next post as this one is already getting pretty long!

Summary
- So things are moving forward pretty fast, I can’t wait to move to Wellington and get started on the new design. And again, anyone who is keen to get involved and help out is more than welcome - I have some good people helping me but the more the merrier!

Thanks for taking the time to catch up on the progress, and I hope you are enjoying the great spring we are having so far

James

Day 25 -Friday

Worked from home for most of the day, Simon aka Brunch aka Kevin brought an electronic drum kit and a ipod touch so it was cool playing round with them.

At 5.30 I went to the Looksy meet up. Simon and Marie Young from iJumP were there and Ilai Amir who is also one of the key people involved in the Looksy movement.

Ilai is really cool and doing some great things so I’m going to list them off:
- He runs a film and website development company called Bruv Design - Almost ready to launch
- He blogs at Dizzy Again
- He volunteers for Connected Media and The Outlook For Someday

After the meet up we drove into town to check out the Public Access preview by 42Below and Sideroom.com “Month of Street Art” exhibition of stencil artists which was packed out and amazing!

Public Access will feature works by the prominent local street art crew Cut Collective. Comprised of four central artists Component, Flox, Trust Me and Enforce 1, Cut Collective have established a firm reputation in the Auckland street art scene. Their work ranges from commissioned artworks to gallery exhibitions, curation, public murals and workshops. Local artists Peepshow, Kool and Gasp join the Cut Collective crew to round out the stellar Public Access lineup.

It was a great exhibition and I highly recommend you go check it out if you are in Auckland.

Day 26

Bummed round most of the day and then flew back to Crimeschurch - good to be home to catch up with the crew but really looking forward to moving to Wellington in November.

I would like to say a thank you shout out to:
- Escape Rentals for the usage of their awesome van for the month

- Wade Hammond for putting me up at his pad for the week in Welly

- Tim Norton for letting me use Silicon Welly as a base for the week

- Patrick MacFie and Nigel Lewis from Start-UP who mentored me and let me work with them in the Icehouse

- Joel Soma for his contacts and help in the art buyers scene

- The PT Chev crew - Malc, Joe, Simon and Tim

- Dylan Bland, Simon and Marie Young, Rich Henry, Ben Young, Margaret Lewis, Vera, Weltec, Massey, WITT, Wintec, Unitec, Elam, Whitecliffe and everyone else who took time out to meet me and give me advice and help.

It was a great trip and I learned so much, it’s really cool to be able to get out there and meet people after all the hard work, time and money that has gone into getting to where Art Klick is now. I have so much more to learn but I love it and really want to help our countries talented creatives get their names out there and make a living from their passion.

From now on this blog will be focused on the New Zealand art’s with guest posts, video interviews and artist profiles. If anyone would like to contribute or has a story they would like to talk about please feel free to give me an email on james@artklick.com

Day 22

Met Martin Street the Publication and Communication administrator for Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design at 11am. Whitecliffe is great, packed with beautiful art and obviously talented students!

At 2.30 I Met Sarah Smith from Unitec. Unitec is huge and used to be an old hospital - the best part are the studios in the old mental institute wards - it’s got such a cool vibe. Unitec has art everywhere and I couldn’t help walk slowly through the hallways - I can’t wait to start seeing some of these talented artists profiling on Art Klick!

 

 

Day 20 - Saturday

Worked all day doing email’s, adding new tasks to my PlanHQ account and doing market research.

Day 21 - Sunday

Went to Snow Planet with Malc and caught up on these blogs while he went for a ride. Then met Duncan and Cole and drove to Mangawhai Heads in Northland. Wrote another post then the laptop battery died so I we hung out in the sun and jammed on the gat.

Went to a cool Samoan church with Cole and his friend at 7pm which was dope too.

 

Day 14 - Sunday 31st August

Ohakune night life was good - Malc and I partied at some packed bar for a couple of hours then rocked back to the van and Malc jammed on the guitar and I made up shitty lyrics about robots - getting to bed at about 1.20am.

Keen not to have to catch a bus up the hill again Malc got up at 7am and drove the Escape Camper up the nice tarsealed road with me still chilling in bed in the back - getting to the top car park easy - pulling out the gas cooker and cooked up some sausages and hung out in the carpark with the robots (see pics below).

I chilled in the cafe for the morning doing some work and research and emailed Patrick MacFie from Start UP Media to see if he was keen to catch up when I was up in Auckland, he emailed me back offering me a desk at The Icehouse for the week which was freaking amazing!

12.20 - Quick lunch then up the hill for some free riding madness with Malc. Loved the mountain - really fun and lots of valleys and bumps to play on - My highlight was using Malc’s rock hopper to hit a rock as a jump (will try get a vid up soon).

After heaps of fun runs it was 4pm and we just got the last chair to the top which was mint. One last run and we were out - but turned left when we should have turned right - traveling for half an hour towards Wanganui (completely the wrong way!) Malc realised after a while and we had to turn around head back the other way - Grrrr!

Finally getting to Auckland at 12am - good to be back to civilisation !

 

Friday - The Unlimited Investment Challenge.

The UIC was very informative with a good selection of speakers that covered everything from business viability to IP and copyright. The UIC was put together by Unlimited Magazine and UK Trade and Investment to help entrepreneurs realise their export potential.

This definitely furthered my knowledge of the great resources available to new start-up companies and established companies that want to grow further. There are some great organisations like the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Escalator who can put you through analysis and preparation for investment. I also found Phillip Loader from Kea very interesting, they are a network of professionals keen to help New Zealand business expand internationally. With over 800,000 kiwis abroard and almost 27,000 members in Kea they can put you in touch with all the right people to take your product or service international.

Greg Cross from BeachHeads was also very interesting and emphasised the importance of talking with your competitors and being anal about being competitive. The good thing about BeachHeads is they have the connections to get you to the top of organisations instead of getting stuck in middle management who rarely give you a yes or no. Another key lesson I took away was to make sure you contract a PR firm that is in your market and has the connections to the industry and media you want to market to. BeachHeads is also partnered with NZTE to help fast growing businesses break into international markets.

Julie Gill the Owner of Unlimited Magazine then gave us some tips on how to deal with media (they get 80+ press releases a day). It’s all about establishing relationships with the people you want to publish your story and sending them something unique so they don’t feel like the other 250+ media in NZ got the same thing.

After some good networking and organising a meeting with Phillip Loader from Kea to come to the meeting I have lined up with Ruth McDavitt from Grow Wellington on Monday I headed back to the Silicon Welly office.

When I walked in there was a guy sitting on the couch and he said “Hey Million Dollar Leg!” I was like “Hey bro, what’s your name?” And he said Pat (Patrick Macfie from Start-up.co.nz) (The coolest start-up New Zealand website and magazine out right now - go get ya self one!).

So I sat down for a chat and showed him through New Zealand’s newest online gallery (Art Klick). He was so amped on it and super encouraging, giving me ideas for improvements and then listing it on Start-up in the community section. Then he sent some emails to people who he thought would be interested and said he is keen to help me out which is a huge honour.

It’s so cool to have the site up and be able to get out there and meet all these people I have been looking up to. Everyone i have met has been very encouraging and supportive which is so cool after all the hard work it has taken to get this far.

There is a lot of work ahead but I am definitely meeting the right people to help make it happen, I am moving to Wellington ASAP!

Another mint day in Welly - might go try sell some of my robot art to fund this trip!

Click here to watch the video of the first tattoo for The Million Dollar Leg

Yesterday afternoon I got the outline for the first tattoo at Inkgrave in Edgeware, Christchurch.

Got some great media coverage with CTV filming my first TV interview and Blair from The Cut Lunch show on local student radio station RDU recording the action for a podcast doco.

The first tattoo (below) is “The Orange Bangle” by loyal and talented Art Klick artist Kim Loasby. The tattoo is 40 square cm which would be $20,000 NZD. I don’t expect anyone to pay that much so have decided to sell half of it on Zillion and the other half on international auction site eBay.

Each auction is for half of the 20cm (half of the tattoo) and have $500 reserves.

I have also got a small instalation planned for Christchurch CBD this morning to draw attention to this blog and advertise the two listings.

AND I got my first official paying sponsor last night! Brendan Smith the founder of Apage.co.nz a new social networking website for New Zealand. Apage is still in the development phase and I am advising him with a redesign for the whole site into a whole new (secret) niche that I think has huge potential both in New Zealand and internationally.

So keep an eye on the auctions and this blog as I try to post news every day due to the constantly developing nature of this idea and what is involved.

If you miss out on this auction or are interested in becoming a sponsor/advertiser please check out the new packages I have made up to suit everyone.

Also - are there any flash animation designers out there who would be interested in building the MillionDollarLeg.co.nz website - should be a fun project (as this one is just temporary).

Below are some pretty pics for y’all.

*** Please Note - This photo was taken in real time and not photoshopped

Things have been so busy since I launched The Million Dollar Leg Project on Wednesday that I haven’t had time to introduce Aidan who has literally taught me everything I know about online and guerrilla marketing.

So I thought I should introduce him and give him the credit he deserves.

Aidan has been involved in the online marketing business, especially Search Engine Optimisation for the past two years. Originating from Taranaki he started Inkode - New Zealand Website Marketing as a total  “SEO Noob” (newbie) and picked it up rapidly. In August 2007 he was scalped by one of the most successful website development companies in Christchurch, Hairy Lemon. He is currently the Marketing Manager for Hairy Lemon while maintaining Inkode and is a partner in Art Klick Ltd, advising me on marketing in his spare time.

His speciality is social media exposure which can result in 10’s of thousands to Millions of visits to a website within days if done correctly. He says this is the best way to jump up through the Google rankings as you get media coverage, blog posts and best of all “sweet links”.

Aidan is also a very talented cartoonist, although he has been slacking recently due to his busy schedule so he is looking forward to getting back into it and using cartoons to promote Art Klick and MillionDollarLeg.

We look forward to keeping you and the media entertained and involved with crazy art stunts, aiming to put New Zealand on the map for its diverse artistic talent.

Love from the Art Klick Team