{"id":7516,"date":"2011-10-06T17:47:45","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T17:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=7516"},"modified":"2025-11-26T14:39:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T21:39:38","slug":"jerry-hardestys-kickstarter-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/jerry-hardestys-kickstarter-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Hardesty’s Kickstarter Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Renaissance artists had the Catholic church and wealthy patrons to fund their art projects. Jerry Hardesty has nearly 5,000 Facebook friends and the Kickstarter community. Who needs a patron with millions when the Internet allows easy access to thousands of people who just might want to invest as little as $5 to be part of your creative process?<\/p>\n

My, how times have changed.<\/p>\n

When painter Jerry Hardesty heard about Kickstarter, an online service that helps creative types find investors for projects, he could immediately see its application to visual art projects he dreams of doing. Hardesty submitted a proposal to fund a project he calls the \u201cUrban Abstract Experience,\u201d a collection of paintings and 3-D works inspired by sidewalk drawings, graffiti, faded signs, decomposing posters, and abandoned buildings he found in and around Salt Lake City. He used his camera to document more than 100 of these images for some future collection of paintings. As he posted some of the photographs to his Facebook page, he found they resonated with his readers. This validated his desire to \u201cpreserve\u201d the images before the elements wash them away by using them as inspiration for a series of abstract paintings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While most visual artists bear all the expense of creating works for an exhibition and then pray that sales cover costs, Hardesty sees this as another model, one that may \u201cgenerate more interest in my art work. I think this is a unique project and that, in itself, may generate interest,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Kickstarter accepted Hardesty\u2019s proposal. Some 40 percent of proposals are not accepted, so he is elated. But that\u2019s just the beginning of a long and arduous process that most artists would find daunting. First he had to thoroughly envision his outcome, his budget, and the steps it will take to get there. If that sounds a lot like a business plan, it is. Do you know many painters who like to do business plans? Perhaps it\u2019s Hardesty\u2019s business background (various positions at Union Pacific Railroad) that provided the confidence and stamina to tackle such a challenge.<\/p>\n

Hardesty \u201cattended\u201d the online Kickstarter school to learn best practices for a successful project. This includes defining the pledge levels for donors and coming up with an award structure for each investor at each level \u2013 from a letter of heartfelt thanks and invitation to the exhibition, to a copy of a book he intends to publish and limited edition prints.<\/p>\n

Hardesty will officially launch his funding campaign on October 14, after which he can take as long as 60 days to gather pledges. Donors send money to Kickstarter, which puts it into an Amazon account from which Hardesty may draw funding as needed. The catch is that if he doesn\u2019t meet his funding goal, all the money must be returned to donors. The incentive, clearly, is to set funding goals as low as possible. With that in mind, most Kickstarter entrepreneurs fund about half their budget with their own resources.<\/p>\n

A look at the painting section of the Kickstarter projects described on its web site, reveals some projects with little or no pledges while others have achieved more than 100 percent of their goals. The difference may be in the quality of the art, the creativity of the project, and how well the artist promotes the campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hardesty is already planting the seeds \u2013 a \u201csoft launch\u201d he calls it \u2013 on Facebook and on\u00a0his blog<\/a>. On October 14, the projected launch day, his readers will get the details about how to invest and what they get for their investment. Those benefits, in addition to \u201cheartfelt thanks\u201d include things like an opportunity to name the book that will document the project or to submit a photographic urban image that Hardesty will paint and have printed on a greeting card for the donor. T-shirts, sets of cards, limited edition prints, and an autographed book are among the other donor awards.<\/p>\n

One of the complicated parts of the planning process is \u201cto match the pledge levels with the awards you\u2019re giving and figure out what your budget is based on that,\u201d says Hardesty. This requires a lot of research to determine the cost of producing the awards and making sure you make a profit in the end.<\/p>\n

Then there are all the other costs involved: materials, marketing, exhibit space, printing, and hired help, to name a few. Kickstarter takes 5 percent of the budget and Amazon charges 3.2 percent for serving as banker for the project. Hardesty estimates he\u2019s spent more than 60 hours on research and planning thus far.<\/p>\n

Of course, creating new works for an exhibit is at the core of the project. Hardesty, whose works are acrylic or mixed media on panel, has completed two paintings so far and estimates he will produce at least one painting per week between now and January, when he plans to exhibit the work. He is still exploring various exhibition venues.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Urban Abstract by Jerry Hardesty<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Hardesty plans to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google Plus to reach prospective donors. If those contacts forward his pitch to their networks, he may benefit from that oh-so-desirable viral potential of the Internet. In addition, the advantage of using Kickstarter is that they have about 300 people who consistently donate to projects they like. Hardesty hopes they will like his.<\/p>\n

Hardesty is part of the co-op gallery Art at the Main, in the atrium of the downtown library building. He has also had shows at Beans and Brew, Barnes and Noble, and other venues around the Salt Lake valley. Though mostly self-taught, Hardesty has taken classes and workshops from several area artists including John Hughes, Susan Gallacher, and Steven Sheffield. He began painting in the \u201870s but his career in the railroad industry took priority. Then, after surviving two strokes and two heart attacks, in 2006 he retired early and took up painting again. Though he began with landscapes and other representational subjects, he has evolved as an abstract expressionist whose work is characterized by bold color, texture, expressive lines, and adventurous combinations of materials.<\/p>\n

Kickstarter may not be the right business model for every artist or every project, but it\u2019s still enough of a novelty that it promises better than average promotional opportunities. For the right project, it may be worth all the extra effort to bend the right-brained artist to the required business tasks.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Urban Abstract by Jerry Hardesty<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

To follow Hardesty\u2019s project or become part of his donor base, stay tuned to his blog posts or look up his\u00a0Facebook page<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry Hardesty’s\u00a0Abstract Expressions<\/em>\u00a0are at the Chapman Branch Library through October 29.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Renaissance artists had the Catholic church and wealthy patrons to fund their art projects. Jerry Hardesty has nearly 5,000 Facebook friends and the Kickstarter community. Who needs a patron with millions when the Internet allows easy access to thousands of people who just might want to invest as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,14],"tags":[717,718],"class_list":["post-7516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-15-bytes","category-visual_arts","tag-jerry-hardesty","tag-kickstarter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/jerryslideshow1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 21:02:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7516"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99722,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions\/99722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}