Who knew what would happen four years ago when visionaries in Grand Rapids, Michigan launched ArtPrize, an annual two-week art festival, party and conversation starter?
Organizers envisioned ArtPrize as a catalyst for connecting artists with this western Michigan community by encouraging engagement and conversation between the public and an eclectic range of artists presenting their work and visions in public venues spread throughout the city.
After attending three of the four annual ArtPrize festivals, I'd say that the organizers more than achieved their original goals as the city seems continually abuzz about the event and always eagerly anticipating the next one.
This year, we managed to slip into town for a last-minute trip just as ArtPrize reached a crescendo in anticipation of the awarding of more than $500,000 in prize money to this year's participating artists.
We managed to preview the short list of finalists and cast our vote for a piece by artist Richard Morse called Stick-to-it-ive-ness: Unwavering pertinacity; perseverance. While I wasn't wild about the rather twee name of the work, I liked this multi-figure work of horses created from tree branches placed in the Grand River near the city's Blue Bridge.
I particularly like pieces that take advantage of Grand Rapids' landscape and local landmarks, making the piece harmonize with the surroundings and making it feel like truly part of the city itself. That tipped the scale in favor of this piece in my mind when voting, plus I liked the artist's message of teamwork to overcome challenges and his use of fallen branches in the work (giving the old wood new life as it were).
In the end, my choice came in fourth with voters, who gave the big $200,000 prize to Adonna Khare's Elephants, an intricate, fantastical and massive triptych rendered in carbon pencil on paper.
This year, we'd planned to go back to our hotel room to watch the award announcement program on local television, but we ended up with a surprise treat instead...thanks to my little Instagramming habit.
Our trip was truly a last-minute jaunt, so we hadn't let anyone we knew in Grand Rapids know we were going to be in town.
One of our friends discovered we were in Grand Rapids when she spotted a couple of my Instagrams taken around town posted to Facebook. It turned out that she worked for a company involved with providing the WiFi system for ArtPrize, and that she had a couple of extra tickets for the awards announcement program and celebration! (Thanks, Tracy!)
So we found ourselves at the old Grand Rapids Press building's newly spiffed-up former loading dock with thousands of other ArtPrize fans as the festival's founder Rick DeVos took the stage and told us more than 47,000 people cast more than 400,000 votes during the two weeks of the 2012 ArtPrize.
The opinion of the public and of the professional critics don't always coincide noted DeVos, but he said that the tension and conversation generated by those differences were ultimately good for the art world and enriched the ArtPrize experience for everyone.
DeVos also talked about how generating ideas, both good and suspect, as key to generating discussion and a real search for solutions to our challenges as a society...and how ArtPrize has succeeded beautifully as an idea and solutions generator.
Members of the Grand Rapids Ballet performed snippets of a larger work as they delivered each award envelope to the award presenters.
I found the video clips of the expert panel of judges for the juried awards especially interesting. Each judge presented the short list of nominee in categories that included awards for a Juried Grand Prize, 2D, 3D, Time & Performance, Urban Space and Venue. The judges then announced their top selection, explaining their reasoning for selecting that particular piece of work or space.
The entire taping went off like clockwork, even coming to an end with a few minutes to spare, which left plenty of time to enjoy the lightshow and electronic music as we exited with the crowd and wondered how next year's ArtPrize experience will top our experience at ArtPrize 2012.
One of the last pieces we viewed at ArtPrize this year was artist Robin Protz' "Dragon", a suspended structure created with 40,000 golden buttons. I'd heard that this art work was amazing, and it was a pretty cool installation that seemed to breathe and sway with every little breeze. The dragon earned a place in this year's Top 25 as voted by the public, but unfortunately for Protz, ArtPrize officials had to disqualify the piece when it became apparent that Protz completed it more than the three years ago as allowed by ArtPrize rules.
It still was a popular draw after its disqualification and Protz' addition of a 2000-red-bead heart in the center of the 18-foot-long golden dragon. The crowd we saw it with after the awards announcement show on late Friday evening was somber, but seemed to understand the ArtPrize ruling like the one mother I heard who sadly explained the situation to her child by saying "...it's beautiful, but she didn't follow the rules."
© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved
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