Concrete Nests: Funding Bird Habitat Art Sculpture on Kickstarter

Back in 2012 I won an award from Wisconsin's Aldo Leopold Audubon Society and the City of Stevens Point for my Chimney Swift Bird habitat tower sculpture sketch design. I built the 8000 lb. habitat sculpture with the help of many hard working volunteers and am proud to say it still stands at the sculpture park today!

As an artist, it has been my lifetime goal, to make a career out of making my art. As any artist will tell you, it's a challenge! What's more, making sculpture out of concrete, is quite an undertaking. Concrete is unforgiving, nearly immovable and at times, dangerously heavy. It's not the same as a graphic designer's work, I can't make a handful of concrete sculptures and then cram them into a zip drive. Once built, they're pretty much there to stay.

Many people have suggested trying kickstarter, as an option to fund more of these concrete sculptures. It took me several months to finish my campaign and I had to make some difficult choices before I launched it.

Probably the most difficult choice, was the goal amount. Most art campaigns have goals of a few thousand dollars, a couple have around ten thousand and I have seen at least one that had a goal of a few hundred thousand. I chose an amount that would afford me the ability to work full time for a year building 3-5 more sculpture towers, and an amount that would allow me to hire at least one assistant to rely on, since volunteers aren't always available. I debated for a long time to try to just fund one more habitat sculpture, but to do that wouldn't get at the heart of my goal, which is too launch my art career into a permanent business.

Chimney Swift birds and Vaux's Swift birds are both beneficial birds in that they eat mosquitoes, moths and beetles, human pests and agricultural pests. These are amazing birds that fly through the air in incredible ways, once you notice them you will never forget their acrobatic flight and their pleasantly eery repeated chirps. I have always felt a deep connection to animals and I've found that they speak to me spiritually, holistically. I am not an ardent animal rights activist, although I admire people that are, it takes a lot of fortitude to stand up for all animals. I find myself in a place where I might be able to help these birds, which have been in decline since a least the 1960's since businesses and people have been covering up their chimneys and cutting down old snag trees, both places these birds nest. I wish for all animals to be treated better, and this means gaining a higher consciousness in all our human activity from our urban and rural development, to our agricultural use to our pets. I am very grateful to be in a place where I might be able to help some beautiful animals but I am not trying to create any illusions about my goal, which is to build sculptural art habitat towers. In other words, I am an artist first, and an advocate for animals second. I claim to be an expert of the former not of the latter.

One of the challenges of gaining funding, as I can see it, is that it may be difficult to perceive how tough it is to build concrete habitat sculptures. They are labor intensive. As I put it to one friend, "If I meet my goal, I will have gained one year of hard labor!"

These aren't wooden habitats, these aren't paintings of birds, these are durable, permanent concrete structures that weigh around 4 tons with a foundation at least as heavy! For these animals, and for any other animals that may benefit as well such as bats, it will be a sanctuary they can depend on to come back to year after year, unlike temporary habitats made of wood which may only last a year or two.

One time when I was back in the park, I was relating the story of how incredibly tough it was to build my sculpture, that it was very hard, back breaking work. The man looked at it, and said,"Huh, you wouldn't know it to look at it!"

I understand the sentiment. I think people look at so many concrete things, highways' and buildings, that why should they think building them is difficult? They're everywhere! But building a unique form and mold that will hold up to the weight of concrete is a challenge, pouring the concrete just right is a challenge. Working with a boom to place 2000 lb concrete slabs into a a square foundation slot certainly presents a challenge worthy of a good hard hat. All of these challenges I take on with glee, but they are time consuming, exhausting and at least a little expensive. I paid the boom truck driver $200/hour to help me move the slabs. Myself and my volunteers weren't paid anything. Building the first tower was pretty trying on my family, being away and working on a high risk kind of project. This leads back to my kickstarter project Concrete Nests. Again, it is my goal to be able to build animal habitat sculptures at least for a year and hopefully indefinitely! I am aiming for a permanent career, not a temporary task.

Just to be clear, my goal for my kickstarter project Concrete Nests is to build permanent animal habitat sculptures. They are durable, tough, colorful, beautiful and not cheap! But to me at least, they are very worthwhile. I am not looking to get rich from my kickstarter project, I am looking to find a way to continue my work. The human side of that, the reality of the situation for this artist, is that while I love to make paintings, drawings and sculptures, I still have to work several other jobs to support my family. If Concrete Nests takes off, I will be able to afford to solely work on the habitat sculptures, and hopefully all my art, for the rest of my life. It's just a little bit selfish, to want to be able to do, exactly what you want to be able to do! I can't deny that! For me, making beautiful things is my passion, helping animals in the small way that I can is good too, and working with communities to enrich their environments with public art is great.