Eyes on the ArtPrize

Yesterday was spent walking for miles in beautiful Indian summer the streets of Grand Rapids for their annual three week long ArtPrize. Art installations are installed throughout  the city, outside, inside businesses, inside museums. People get to vote (voting was over as we were there in the last 3 days) and the first prize artist gets $250,000. As  the people's taste is not always fair, there is a juried voting too, which had very different results. Some locations are on the outskirts so those art pieces do not get the same exposure as those located more centrally. We tried to cover as much as possible (my poor feet!) but we probably saw less than half. We took a break midday at my friend's sister's restaurant, which had tasty food and was very cute plus I got to meet the sister and husband for the first time. They also provided some useful tips for seeing some of the otherwise overlooked art. Art was very mixed and the term applied loosely in some cases. One artist's contribution was that she walked 2000 miles to get there. Hard to capture on film. One of our favorite's was a short film focusing on the Grand River throughout the seasons. The same scene in winter would be superimposed over what it looks like in summer. Hard to describe but it was very cool.

Lots of Mona Lisa themes: one artist filled a whole room with portraits of people sitting in the pose but each had a different treatment

Huge praying mantis and butterfly: this got top ten votes. The bigger, the more likely to win

This mural shows breast cancer survivors living their post cancer lives

This was performance art: The gold painted guy stood still for hours. We saw him breathe once.

An ice sculpture in a refrigerated van

This was made entirely of postage stamps

One of my favorites: Glitter Girl. This was made of thousands of shiny sequins hung on strings. Each sequin gave the color

Chair made from melted records

Toothpick sculpture

Belt made from belts

A tip jar in a bar: you toss coins into the mouth

The planters in Grand Rapids were very pretty

This fish mobile was made up of fishing lures. Unfortunately my camera didn't know what to focus on

Table made up of cool glass blocks that difracted light interestingly

Looking out of the Grand Rapids Art Museum

The artists drew these with two hands at one: Right arm duplicating what the left arm was doing

This painting had strings of magnifying glasses dangling in front of it. I tried to get a shot through one of the dangling lenses

Outside the Children's museum

My friend as a child

Metaphorest: One of the winners. Huge and interesting. Hard to capture with a photo

The door handle leading in to my friend's sister's restaurant

A tasty lunch

Inside: lots of cool details

Outside: One of the oldest buildings in GR

Made of matches

Under the clouds: I really liked this one and since it was off the beaten path up Heritage Hill, probably not seen by many

Crochetted phones

Made from wood blocks

One of our stranger moments: the artist wanted to showcase his jumping ability while holding a laptop showing him jumping in front of his artwork. We are to send this to him. Anyway his artwork consisted of paper made from dollars discarded and shredded by the mint (provided for free) that amounted to the price of his art school education..around $49,0000 

I loved the art deco stylized peacocks in the building's molding. They should lose the orange peacock though

Inside the resaurant

My friend's sister owns two restaurants and bars adjacent to each other

Some art is hard to capture. This was in the basement of a very large building consisting of strings of lights. A cool effect but without a tripod...

A scene made up of used lottery tickets. You can see me in the mirror

Lottery ticket detail

These glass tubes had native plant samples in each

Detail of a column in a tapas place I would not mind trying

Along the riverbanks

The UM mascot: this was in a museum: not part of ArtPrize. Probably more endangered  that the hunter got the mom, the kit and the kits left behind

More later..need to run (literally)