Local artist Sara Drennan has launched a monthlong campaign on Kickstarter.com to help fund her photographic essay depicting images from roadside memorials titled “Color, Color, Black & White” through the site’s “crowdfunding” program.

Kickstarter is a website in which artists, musicians, or filmmakers sign up and create a project page, shooting videos and brainstorming ideas to offer backers. Creators then launch their page and share it with the world in exchange for updates on the project. Every project creator sets a funding goal and deadline. If people take interest in their idea they can pledge money to make it happen. If the project thrives in reaching its funding goal, all backers’ credit cards are charged when time expires. However, if the project falls short, no one is charged. Funding on Kickstarter is win or lose.

Inspiration for the project struck Drennan while driving by the same roadside memorial in her commute to her part-time waitressing job at Frugatti’s. After admiring the site for months, she decided to pull over and what she found was moving.

“It was pretty elaborate,” said Drennan. “It had a T-shirt, several different crosses, flowers and candles and it always caught my eye. Out of curiosity I decided to pull over and find out what that was all about and see whom it was for. I think it’s really important for people to remember their past loved ones and always keep them with them.

“After that, I started noticing them around town. So, I just started pulling over snapping photographs and decided that I wanted to make a piece about it.”

“Color, Color, Black & White” will be a mixed media project and will feature more than just photographs. A wood-based 3D sculpture will be incorporated, but not quite one that you can walk around.

“It’s going to have layers and transparencies and incorporate these toys from my youth called Shrinky Dinks,” she said. “You could draw on them and then you put them in the oven and they shrink. I am going to put the images of some these memorials on the shrinky dinks and layer them on top of the transparency and the paper so it’s almost like looking at a 3D image for each one. It’s going to be very layered, dynamic and full of texture, and also incorporate information about the memorial sites themselves and take excerpts from the obituaries and work that into the piece also.”

Her funding goal is set at $600 and $235 has been pledged so far. The majority of the cost will be used towards purchasing chemicals, which start at $75 to $100, for processing and developing photos in her home studio, which she converted into a darkroom. The remaining money will go towards 35mm and Polaroid film, hardware, lumber and miscellaneous darkroom supplies. Her deadline expires on Oct. 7.

This is Drennan’s first Kickstarter project and hopes people fund her creative endeavor.

“It’s the stepping stone for the body of work I want to create for my solo show,” she said. “I just hope that it works out. If it doesn’t I am still going to do it, it’s just going to take longer.”

On Sept. 20, Kickstarter introduced a number of new rules designed to prevent creators from promising a product they can’t deliver. The goal, Kickstarter says, is to prevent entrepreneurs from over-promising and disappointing backers by not delivering, like some popular projects have been accused of. By forcing submitters to thoroughly think through the challenges and be translucent about current progress, they’re now discouraging unrealistic projects and uplifting the creators who encompass the skills to make their dreams into a reality.

Drennan shared her opinion on the topic.

“Unfortunately, it’s not beneficial for the people who are doing prototype style projects,” she said. “But for people like me, it’s better because backers are more likely to fund smaller realistic art-based projects.

“At first, Kickstarter didn’t really write in their guidelines whether or not the people who received the funding if they had to actually give it all back, which raises that ethical question. If you’re not going to be able to go through with your project then you should just give the money back.”