In the 1820s, James Audubon wanted to publish a collection of his drawings of North American birds. To raise money to print the edition, he visited the homes of potential sponsors in the United States, England, Scotland, and France. Audubon wasted years traipsing around explaining his project. Time that could have been better spent actually drawing birds.

If Audubon attempted his project today, he’d simply describe what he wanted to do on a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter and offer copies of the finished edition as rewards to the people who chose to support the project. He’d probably get the funding needed in days without leaving home.

We like Kickstarter because it eliminates most risk. One simply has to explain a project in detail and invite sponsors to pledge. In exchange, the sponsors will receive rewards if the project succeeds. If a project can’t attract adequate support, no pledges are collected and there’s no obligation to produce anything.

Before crowd funding, one had to find investors or support projects from your own piggy bank. One beautiful result of eliminating risk is that creators are free to move further away from the safe end. It’s now practical to propose all manner of goofy project ideas. That’s what Calamityware has been doing and hopes to continue to do.

Don created his first Kickstarter project in October of 2013. To his surprise, 349 sponsors made pledges to support a small production run of porcelain dinner plates with a traditional blue-willow scene enlivened with a squadron of flying monkeys. The pledges collected were nearly enough to cover the production, packaging, and shipping costs.

Don enjoyed the experience, so he kept going. Since then, he has completed 65 more Kickstarter projects. Every one of them has been great fun.

After each Kickstarter project closes and the rewards have been sent to the sponsors, there are often extra products that become available in our online store for people who missed the Kickstarter project. Gradually the store has filled up with a wide range of oddities.

Since the start, we have had over 20,000 people pledge via Kickstarter and we cannot thank you all enough for your support and interest in Don’s art.

If you want to be sure to hear about our Kickstarter projects, new products, and all of our new creative obsessions, you should join our email list. We aim for weekly updates. Many of these missives have been known to make people laugh.

Alternatively, you can create a Kickstarter account and follow Don Moyer so you'll be one of the first to know when a new project comes to life.