We just returned from our fourth annual ArtPrize trip, and I can say that the art festival and competition just gets bigger and better each year.
The city buzzed with excitement this past weekend as the first round of public voting ended and ArtPrize organizers announced the Top Ten selections determined by voters previewing over 1,500 pieces of art spread across the city in nearly 170 different venues.
The venues range from larger exhibition centers and showcases like the Grand Rapids Art Museum, The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Kendall College of Art and Design, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA) and the Women's City Club where you can view dozens of artists in one place...to smaller venues like local restaurants, real estate offices and stores.
We try to see several of the larger venues each year so we're sure to see at least a few of the artworks that make it into the final round of voting.
We also like to get to a few venues we haven't seen in previous years because they are new to ArtPrize, or we just didn't have a chance to get to them in a prior year.
This year, we particularly enjoyed seeing pieces at the Kendall College of Art and Design, the UICA, Fountain Street Church and St. Cecilia Music Center for the first time. We remember the UICA from 2010, when it was a mostly vacant building that hosted a third place winner ("Lure/Wave" by Belli Liu), but it was fun seeing it this year as a large, multi-floor showcase with several galleries.
We also stopped off at a couple of venues on the advice of volunteers who we rode the ArtPrize shuttle bus with on Friday. That was how we discovered the Boardwalk Condominiums venue, which hosted about 40 artworks, and the nearby Canal Street Park with another half-dozen ArtPrize entries.
It's also fun to see a few favorite art pieces from prior ArtPrize competitions that become a permanent part of the city landscape like one of my favorite sculptures from last year's ArtPrize, "Albert Einstein Between Theorems" by Jim Dolan, which still stands in a small public space along Pearl Street in downtown.
We used the ArtPrize app to vote in 2011 and 2012. We found this year's version of the app even easier to use and especially appreciated some of the newer features that made it simple to get walking directions from one place to another.
This year's Top Ten entries include "Tired Pandas" by Nick Jakubiak made from (what else?) recycled bicycle tires and "Dancing With Mother Nature" by Paul Baliker sculpted from cedar wood. The latter looks like a big hunk of driftwood from far away, but a closer look reveals numerous detailed carvings of sea and shore animals like flamingos and manatees. I also appreciated Jakubiak's use of recycled materials in his work.
It's also interesting to see "Myth-or-Logic" by Robin Protz make the Top Ten this year. This is the third year for Protz to compete in ArtPrize and while her suspended dragon piece made from 40,000 thousand buttons made the Top 25 in public voting last year, ArtPrize officials disqualified the piece because they believed Protz didn't complete the work in the time allotted by the contest rules that year. Perhaps the third time will be the charm for this artist with her fanciful animal made of suspended bamboo pieces.
Check out the rest of this year's Top Ten here. You can also check out my ArtPrize recap from 2012, as well as photo features from the 2012, 2011 and 2010 ArtPrize competitions.
© Dominique King 2013 All rights reserved
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