Planning for a Cross-America Painting Trip - Part One (3) America, nomad, painting, roadtrip2015

The Hustle

This week. I decided to step up the hustle and began writing a proposal for the roadtrip.

After a few iterations, the budget quickly grew to the sum of S$25,254. My feeling is that I am still missing items here,  I also have in mind publishing my own book after the trip. Self publication will cost me about $9000, Altogether, I will need a total S$34,254 to accomplish my goal.

Lets consider the options available for the hustle :

1) National Art Councils of Singapore offers Art grants for creation, production and presentation.
2) I have also heard that a few notable Foundations in Singapore offer grants to Artists.
3) Notable Charitable Foundation overseas that gives out grant.( The Pollock-Kranser Foundation)
4) Writing to related businesses for sponsorship. (Airlines/ Travel Agencies/ Art Suppliers and etc)
5) Crowd sourcing for the require amount. Think kickstarter or Indiegogo

US Dollar against SGD. The next big problem that I foresee  is the inflation of American Dollars against Sing Dollars.

Here are some issues to consider with the hustle.

1) The NAC states that its grants are peg to 50% of total require amount. Being fairly unknown to the council, my odds of getting the grant is frankly very weak. I started the application but may be too late to receive the grant with my proposed date ( Aug-Oct 2015). The grant cycle starts from Oct 2015.

Chairman of Lee Foundation. Top Philanthropist. Real Hero   

2) The only one that came to my mind is the Lee Foundation. They funded just about every Art show in town... Interestingly, the foundation does not maintain a website. After much digging around, I found their mailing address:


Dr Lee Seng Gee Chairman
Lee Foundation 

65 Chulia Street
#44-01 OCBC Centre
Singapore 049513

3) The Pollock Kranser Foundation states that it won't fund personal travels. I wonder if En Plein-air paintings can be an exception. I will try

4) It may be foolish to invest in the hustle for sponsorship because time spent writing to businesses may never be justified. Experiences have taught me that businesses are usually the least prospective. Think about it, businesses evaluate potential gain for a living. Unless you are a mega celebrity (because of visibility), there is little reason for them to give you anything.  I will still try but I won't invest too much time here. Here are some companies that I will write into:
Airlines, Car Rental and the biggest hotel chain in the United States. Unless I can miraculously get onto the Ellen DeGeneres show. This method of hustle is most futile.

5) A quick look up kickstarter.
Most Artists fail in raising funds on crowd funding platform. More so on indiegogo it seems.
Those successfully funded also seem to raised fairly insignificant amount. (usually below USD$3,000) Having successfully raised money on kickstarter, I personally know how hard it will be to gather support for the Arts. It is also significantly harder if you are not rewarding something tangible. Technically speaking, I can offer paintings as reward. However, considering the time and effort needed to produce them versus the potential buyers and payout? I am also concerned that my supporter may suffer from fatigue if I keep asking them for help. It will be an intense uphill battle. None the less, crowd sourcing is a viable outlet to raise this fund and I will have to consider it as well.

Planning for a Cross America Painting Trip (Part 2)

After much research on the cost of building my own vehicle, I thought it would be wise for me to do a research on the actual cost of renting a vehicle, motel or cheap hotels. Since I needed a better estimate, I decide to account for all possible cost that may incur throughout this trip.

Duration + Itinerary :My visa grant me up 90 days in America. On my calendar, I have Aug 24 until October 11 for this trip. This put me on an estimated 50 days in America. For the start, I need to figure out my itinerary.

I tried a couple of websites and eventually found roadtripper.com to be the most useful. The website and its mobile app allow you to discover nearby attractions and amenities. However, there is one draw back on road tripper... It only allows you to log 40 locations on any given trip. To work around this situation, I decided to approach this like painting by first blocking out the general states that I will like to drive by, noting down important landmarks that I need to visit & paint.

Assuming I will fly to Seattle, Rent a Car and travel across America and leave from Connecticut

A simple calculation of the distance from this plan put me at an estimate of 8000+ miles. Conservatively speaking, I will easily cross 10,000 miles and would certainly need to budget USD$2000 for gas alone.

A more detailed plan of the places of interest exponentially raises my distance and cost

I think the west coast is just full of spectacular scenes. From Death Valley, Yosemite to the Pacific Coast Highway. The west Coast alone can literally pack up my 50 days and clock 5000 miles to this trip.
 
Air Ticket:
Suppose I take a plane from Singapore, drop into Seattle, WA. Hop onto to a rental car. drive all the way to the east coast, drop the car off in Connecticut and fly home from Bradly International Airport. Flying with Northwest Airline will set me back about $2,156 SGD.

Car Rental:
I did a quick check on the cost of rental with Budget car rental
Car rental alone will set me back about SGD $2,800
Roadside assistance will put me at  SGD$1750

Accommodation: 
Assume there are variation in prices. I allocated an estimate of $100 per night for 50 nights and that put me at $5000.

General budget for this trip.
( Did not account for fluctuation in currency. USD is expected to gain against SGD)

First pass estimate of a 50 day trip to America will set me back SGD$21,537

Of course, there are probably many things I can shave off or condense to tighten up the budget. Generally speaking, I will need to allocate around SGD$20,000 for this entire trip.  Suppose if I went with building my own vehicle. I will not be able to drop off the vehicle and fly off. There are certainly advantages to a Van. With more space and supplies with me, I can probably do more and paint larger pieces. The panels on the Van can also potentially be used for advertising for this trip.

Speaking of which I have to think about how to raise this money to make this trip happen.