Summary:
Welcome to another great episode of Startup Junkies!
On this episode, hosts Jeff Amerine, Victoria Dickerson, and Grace Gill sit down with Sean Fitzgibbon, author and artist of the nonfiction book What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel. Sean is a freelance creative who specializes in various forms of visual development. He has had his work exhibited throughout the United States and was a 2023 recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award. Throughout the show, Sean shares the eerie history of Eureka Springs’ Crescent Hotel as well as how he turned a longtime interest into a passion project, his experience promoting his work on Kickstarter, and best practices for entrepreneurs looking to do the same.
Show Notes:
(0:49) Introduction to Sean
(9:40) About What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel
(15:13) Utilizing Kickstarter
(23:42) Stories Found in the Book
(32:35) Sean’s Research Experience
(39:59) Where to Find Sean’s Work
(42:06) What’s Next for Sean
(44:57) Advice to Other Creatives
(52:52) Closing Question
Links:
What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel
Quotes:
“This is a big passion project because I’ve always loved telling stories. I always have this weird history I’m attracted to. I always want to go to these strange places that are off the beaten path.” – Sean Fitzgibbon, (9:13)
“If you’re going to do a Kickstarter campaign, you need to go support other Kickstarters. There’s a network effect. People will look and be like is this just some interloper coming into our community…also a lot of people think of Kickstarter as a shortcut and it’s not. It’s a profit maximizer.” – Sean Fitzgibbon, (19:00)
“I want to do something for society, and I feel like I’m helping bridge this gap of making history accessible. It’s a gateway to literacy for children.” – Sean Fitzgibbon, (47:28)
“A fist doesn’t do anything, whereas an open hand gives and receives. And that’s the way I look at it…I don’t ever want to have a closed fist.” – Sean Fitzgibbon, (50:06)
Exploring Arkansas’s Crescent Hotel with Author and Artist Sean Fitzgibbon
On this episode, hosts Jeff Amerine, Victoria Dickerson, and Grace Gill sit down with Sean Fitzgibbon, author and artist of the nonfiction book What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel. Sean is a freelance creative who specializes in various forms of visual development. He has had his work exhibited throughout the United States and was a 2023 recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award. Throughout the show, Sean shares the eerie history of Eureka Springs’ Crescent Hotel as well as how he turned a longtime interest into a passion project, his experience promoting his work on Kickstarter, and best practices for entrepreneurs looking to do the same.
Using Creativity to Highlight History
Sean Fitzgibbon’s most recent book, What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel, features historical, fully-painted graphics that explore the stories surrounding the Crescent Hotel’s strange and tragic two years as a depression-age cancer center known as the Baker Hospital. The book is two-hundred-forty pages with a narrative that blends oral histories, newspaper articles, and Norman Baker’s own biography.
“I want to do something for society, and I feel like I’m helping bridge this gap of making history accessible. It’s a gateway to literacy for children.” – Sean Fitzgibbon, (47:28)
The book spans three different time periods: the early nineteen hundreds when it was first constructed, the Baker Hospital era, and the present day. What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel visually resembles a comic book except for all its stories and illustrations are depictions of true events. Furthermore, there are three varying color tones throughout the book so readers can always know what period they’re reading based on the hue of the illustrations.
The Intersection of Entrepreneurship and Art
To promote What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel, Sean utilized Kickstarter, a global crowdfunding platform on a mission to help bring creative projects to life by providing creators a space to share their work with communities that will fund them. With Kickstarter, creators are constantly in control of their campaigns and are encouraged to further their campaigns by backing other creators’ works.
“If you’re going to do a Kickstarter campaign, you need to go support other Kickstarters. There’s a network effect. People will look and be like is this just some interloper coming into our community…also a lot of people think of Kickstarter as a shortcut and it’s not. It’s a profit maximizer.” – Sean Fitzgibbon, (19:00)
The best way to be successful on Kickstarter is to tap into the worldwide community of over twenty-two million users. Additionally, Kickstarter believes creative expression is essential to a healthy and vibrant society, but it needs to happen in a protected space. Therefore, it wants to put power back into the hands of creative individuals so they’re no longer controlled by art world elites or entertainment executives.
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