Artprize!

Those of you who have been with me for a while will remember previous posts on Artprize.  It's an Art event that has been taking place in Grand Rapids Michigan for 8 years.  It's free to see and the public gets to vote for their favorite piece.  This year there were 1,453 artists in 170 venues in the city.  The prizes were for a total of $500,000 which is split up between the public vote and a juried vote.  It lasts for about 3 weeks, after 2 weeks the top 20 pieces are announced, and a winner is announced 2 days before it ends.

I have gone to this event almost every year. It's fun to walk around the city and see all the art.  I went with some good friends this year; we spent about 5 hours walking around.  We saw way more than I can show you, but there was still a lot we didn't see.

 Here we are - just getting started!

 This was painted on metal, and parts of the bear had metal exposed.  It doesn't show up nearly as good on a photo.

 The name of this one is 'Grand Rabbits', a play on the name of the city, with views of Grand Rapids in its background.

 This one is made of assorted bottlecaps - from pop bottles to coffee cans.  It was made by kids in a local school.

 This wheelchair is made from toy soldiers.

 Some of the paintings, like this one look like a photo!

 As you walk around the city, you see art everywhere!

 I thought this piece was quite amazing.  It's made from nails, all put in to a specific depth and with different color heads.

This is a pencil drawing.

My friend Bonnie wanted to check out the police segway.  I don't know where the officer that was using this was.  I had read that there was going to be more police than usual on the streets because of the large influx of people.

Becky was looking for her 15 minutes of fame!

The side of this building was painted a few years ago as part of Artprize.

 There are some neat buildings in the city.

 I love this old building reflected in a new one.

Here's the Grand River, which runs through the city.


And now, here are the pieces that we saw from the top 20:

'Hoot' - This is one of several paintings.  This artist had the Artprize visitors help with her paintings, so there were all kinds of owl paintings, each one different than the others.

 This was very unusual.  It's called 'The sweepers clock'.  It was a video, with two men sweeping those lines of dirt and trash.  They did it in perfect time, so you could see what time it was.  When I took this photo, it was about 12:20.  The video was 12 hours long.  I don't know how they could do that for 12 hours and not get the time messed up.  This was on both the jurors list and the peoples list.  As hard as it would be, it doesn't really seem like art to me.

'Emoh - sculpture/time capsule/temporary home'.   A lot of the art isn't what I would call art, but it has a meaning behind it.  This ball is something a man has been living in to draw attention to homeless people.

 'Invasive Species - Shiny Seed'.   Kind of cool, but it wouldn't be in my top 20.

'Imagine If'.  This is made from small, flat metal plates hanging from filament string to create these winged horses.  They were really quite amazing to see.

 'The butterfly effect'.  This had thousands of brass butterflies hanging from the ceiling and covering the walls of a room.

 Here's a close up of the butterflies.

This is a close up of a piece called 'Sand Sturgeon'.   It looks one way up close, but from a distance it looks like this:

 Pretty neat!

 This is another one that doesn't look like much a first.  It's thousands of little squares of wood, each cut at a different angle.  However, when a light is shone above it, the shadows created make this:

Amazing!

 'Ashes to Ashes'.  This painting was huge!  It was very realistic, we could almost hear the fire crackling.

'To protect and to serve'.  The artist painted this group of 1930's motorcycle police before the current events involving police had begun.  They had post-it notes asking people to write how they felt the nation could heal from this.  The notes I saw were mostly positive in thanking our police.

 This is the winner of the public vote.  'Wounded Warrior Dogs'.   This piece is to honor and remember the physical and psychological price paid by med and women returning from battle.

Each piece is hand carved and it took him 14 months to complete.

It was another good year at Artprize!