Hello lovelies – “Brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, vibrations in the mind of the one true god whose name is love.” A month ago, we launched a campaign to create and place a statue of Houston comedy legend Bill Hicks right here in the city. We are happy to say that the donations have been coming in at a steady pace since the announcement, and although we have yet to reach our goal, we are well on our way to making this a reality. We want to say thank you to each and every one of the people who have donated their hard-earned money and who have shared this project with their friends and on their social networks. You are the reason this will happen. We look forward to the day when we can all celebrate as the sheet is pulled off of the statue. We know there have been some questions about the project since its launching, so we wanted to address a few that we have seen online in the past month and hopefully, it will give some more insight and put you at ease about donating.
First, we have seen numerous people ask why we didn’t use a service like Kickstarter for this project. The truth is, we tried. We went through the process of creating the project and read the terms of service over and over before we submitted it to make sure that we fell within the guidelines and wouldn’t have any problems. After submitting, we received an e-mail telling us our project was declined with no explanation. After repeated attempts to contact Kickstarter to figure out why we were denied and what we could do to fix it with no answer, we decided to do it ourselves with PayPal.
It has also come to our attention that there have been some questions regarding the people behind the statue project. To clear up any confusion about who is running this campaign, allow us to introduce ourselves to put you at ease, and show you that it is in good hands.
1. Omar Afra is the publisher of Free Press Houston, co-producer of FPSF, and managing partner of Fitzgerald’s. More importantly, Afra is a father of two.
2. Jermaine Rogers is a world renowned poster artist and has been creating art since 1994. Jermaine has created the iconic image of Bill Hicks that serves as the art across the entire campaign for the statue.
3. Will Guess is a contributing writer and avid Hicks fan. He is in constant contact with the Hicks family and David Adickes, serving as the liason of the entire project.
4. David Adickes is an internationally known artist and sculptor who has created some of Houston’s famous landmarks including the President’s heads and the enormous statues of The Beatles. David has agreed to create a unique sculpture of Bill Hicks that will permanently pay homage to the Houston legend.
Speaking of David Adickes, there has been some chatter on the interwebs that he hasn’t agreed to do the statue of Bill, which I can say with 100% certainty is simply untrue. We spoke with David as recent as yesterday and he is still committed to creating an amazing statue.
Though this project won’t happen overnight, we have momentum and it WILL succeed in due time. If you have ANY questions at all, please e-mail info@billhicksstatue.com or visit the website at www.billhicksstatue.com We are here to answer your questions and eliminate your concerns.
Special thanks to the Hicks estate, specifically Bill’s brother, Steve, and his mother, Mary, for their continuing support of our efforts and for helping with everything.
