Over the Top

Preparing the rewards to send to the Art Mysteries Kickstarter sponsors.

It took almost the whole 30 days but the Art Mysteries Kickstarter succeeded.  It took much more emotional toll than I imagined.  It took more PR than I'm usually comfortable with. It took over 80 wonderful sponsors believing in the value of the project.

The project is a series of collaborative comics in which Susan Shulman, Ria Vanden Eynde and I explore the mysteries, controversies and hi-jinks of the contemporary art world.

But before we move into high gear assembling the artwork that will make up our 6th issue, I'm pouring over Excel spreadsheets making sure that the rewards we promised are out the door and in the mail to those sponsors.  Best of all many of those people will receive the next four of our limited edition comics.

For those unfamiliar with Kickstarter (we found many more than we imagined), it is a funding platform for creative projects.  It is geared to fund specific projects involving film, games, music, art, design and technology.  Since it launched in 2009 over 36,000 projects have been funded by the broad based crowd sourcing that forms this model of funding.


Only about 44% of projects that are launched reach their funding goals and the Kickstarter model makes it an all or nothing funding.  Either you get enough commitments to complete your project or you go back to the drawing board.

Backers ultimately decide if you have a worthy project and whether they have confidence that you can accomplish your goals.  Plus, we sincerely believe that backing Art Mysteries amounts to more than a handout.
Our backers believe in our ability to make a positive contribution to that subset of the art world that includes artists publications, zines and graphic novels.

William Evertson and Susan Shulman in a panel detail from Issue #6 - due out late March, 2013

How does it compare to our usual method of competing for funds from traditional art granting sources? I think we found that despite the initial discomfort of making personal pitches to our friends, colleagues and complete strangers, that we were ultimately very pleasantly surprised that so many people have confidence in our vision.

Although competing in the shrinking arena of foundation funding has certainly provided a wonderful stack of rejection letters to keep warm with.

Now that the Kickstarter has come to an end you can still support this particular Kali Collective project by buying single issues from our website at seekingkali.com.

Each issue features many fine under-represented artists, art criticism and liberal doses of satire as we explore what it takes to make it in Artworld.