Wow.

Hold on, we need a second, because we're a bit speechless.

But seriously, WOW.

Ok, ok. We can pull it together here. The Kickstarter has reached the end of its funding period, and to say it was a success is an understatement. Your enthusiastic and generous support of our campaign has blown us away. When we first come up with this Kickstarter scheme, we crossed our fingers, knocked on wood, sacrificed the occasional goat--anything to help our chances in reaching our minimum $18,500 funding. You guys got us there, and then you kept on going. You didn't even seem to care that we'd run out of goats.

The final number? $23,096. Excuse us if we're slurring, but our jaws are still on the floor.

“Thank you” almost doesn't cut it. We are immensely grateful: for your time, for your generosity, for your consideration, and for believing in this project. It means more to us than we can fully express in the confines of an open letter on the internet.

And so we're going to take all this dumbstruck energy and excitement and we're going to channel it into making the best goddamn book we possibly can. Because those who give deserve to receive, and we give back with interest.

With this nearly $5,000 overfund, we now have the tools to do just that. We know that the extra funds will go into something good, be it extra pages, a larger book, etc., and we hope that come April, we will wow you just as much as you've wowed us. It's a tall order, but we're up to the challenge.

If you're interested in watching the final video, Oliver has graciously combined his serial pieces into a compact Tiny Documentary. If you have the sixteen minutes and twenty five seconds to spare, we promise it'll be worth your while:

Please stay tuned for updates on the book as it comes together. Mark your calendars for the first Friday in April when the book will be released alongside Jake's solo show at Newspace Center for Photography in Portland. Come on by the opening if you can; we hope to one day shake your hand and thank you in person. Hugging is likely.

Best regards for the new year.

Blue Mitchell, Katt Janson, Oliver Ogden, and Jake Shivery

Many months ago, I was approached by Blue Mitchell of One Twelve Publishing. He had interest in expanding their publication line-up to include a series of monographs, and he wanted to start with my work.

Well, many months and a significant amount of work later, he's launching his Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for this venture.

Obviously, I'm excited and honored to be considered for this project. I've always wanted to see my portraits in book form, all together, the way that they're meant to be. I have nothing but respect for Blue, not only as a publisher, but as the designer who will personally be handling the lay-out for the book.

We have worked through a lot of ideas, and have settled on the premise that the book will be one half art book and one half essay. It will be softcover, 9x12 in size so that we may present the 8x10 plates as they are meant to be viewed. The second half, the essay, well – let's just say that I've been re-training myself to write since March. This essay will come in at about fifteen thousand words, and if nothing else, I have the best and most diverse groups of editors that any struggling writer could ask for.

Don't worry – I'll get it together. Nothing better than pressure and support (and a looming deadline) to make things like this take form.

This book will be beautiful. I'm very excited that One Twelve Publishing wants to actually print it – not digitally, like everything we're used to seeing – but on actual offset presses. Our press check trip to the print shop was very illuminating. Things like this just don't happen anymore, but they should.

The Kickstarter campaign itself is pretty exciting – Oliver Ogden has been producing the video work and has opted to convert his mini-documentary into a serial. We'll be releasing the ongoing series one at a time, every Monday for the length of the campaign. As you might expect, I was a little fussy about being followed around by a video camera, but I changed my mind quickly once I started seeing the results.

Please join us on Kickstarter for this campaign. Donations are appreciated, of course, but it will be very important to a project of this size that folks are willing to help get the word out. Anything that you can do to help out, including spreading the message, is greatly appreciated.

Here's that link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/240268849/contact-by-jake-shivery

Your pal,

jake

Holy Mackeral! The Kickstarter over-funded... seriously.

Wow.

One Twelve Publishing Kickstarter Campaign