Option A or B...

I'm asking this in regards to helping my SERP's ranking, since i'm currently #15 on my keyword, and slowly moving to the first page. This linking question can hopefully help me move up a tad more.

I have my own commerce website, and i'm in the process of redoing my friends website. He does the art for my site, and i'm redoing his website in return. I finished my own site first, and it is starting to rank well in google. I have a link to his site at the footer of every page of my commerce site, which comes to about 500 pages.
My question is on the linking strategy from his site to mine. He does not use search engines to find his site for traffic. It is mostly word of mouth and actual business letters he sends out. I was planning on having a link at the footer of each of his pages, about 100, back to my site with a few keywords. But he also has a full page of artwork on my website, and I can do that page anyway I want to, from the title to the text/keywords. So my options are...

A) Have 100 incoming links from each page, with the keywords in the href tag,

or

B) Have the one page with the website artwork perfectly optimized, including 250-300 words, full of keywords, each image linked to my site, title using the keywords, etc. Also, each of the websites 100 pages have a link to the webart page, with the keyword in it.

if this confuses anyone, check out the page on his site linking to mine, regarding the art. http://www.trampolinestudios.com/illuminous_times_candles.html
it is a work in progress, and will need more optimizing.