Last night I hosted my first live video. I can’t believe I yapped for nearly an hour.
It was fun to reflect on a past project. From 2013-2020 I ran a small art gallery here in the west end of Toronto called the Blackcat Artspace. It was a wonderful example of building community of a very small scale. The space itself was maybe 400 sq. feet and every show there would spill out into the street.
There was an energy and buzz in that room, I sometimes I miss it.
Many of the artists and photographers who had exhibitions there in the early days have gone on to be incredibly successful in there own practices. But in the begining there was no business plan, no guaranteed revenue. The goal was just to keep it going.
In the livestream I compare the experience to the movie Beautiful Losers, which you can watch the whole doc on YouTube:
Make something from nothing.
For most of the time I ran the gallery I never even had a good website for it. It was the golden age of social media and much of the documentation of the exhibits were posted as Facebook albums, each opening had a Facebook event…
In the video above I share how I used Claude Code to make a new standalone website that will be the archive of every exhibit, show, opening reception, and event that happened at Blackcat Artspace.
If you’re just getting started with using Claude Code, my biggest tip I can offer is this starting prompt my brother shared with me:
(The things I want to do)
Reminder: I want a plan as the output here, not the code.
IMPORTANT: I want you to ask me questions now about any details,
edge cases, features, etc. so that I can better instruct you.
Keep asking me questions and DO NOT start writing the plan until
I have explicitly told you I think you have enough information.These AI tools are designed to impress us with “instant gratification” but in order to make any thing good you need to slow this process down. Tell Claude what you need it to create in as much detail as possible, or ask it what it can do, ideally before it starts to write any code.
I’m still working on “vibe coding” these sites, but check them out, and let me know what you think!
The urls are currently:
https://www.blackcatartspace.com and https://video.shadedpixel.net
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All photos are my own, and copyright Andrew Williamson Photography (unless otherwise stated)
Thank you for reading (and watching) AI tools were only use in the coding of these websites not any of the writing. Any grammatical or spelling errors are the result of my career as a professional photographer and filmmaker and not being a writer. ✌️
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