For the people of Grand Rapids, Mich., the last weekend of September through the first weekend of October means one thing: ArtPrize.
A non-profit event, ArtPrize seeks to centralize artists from California, Costa Rica, New York and even the Adriatic Coasts of Italy.
The artwork covers the city with a blanket of creativity and color.
This year, ArtPrize displayed 1,517 different works of art, created by over 1,700 Artists in over 150 venues. As visitors saunter through the streets and venues of Grand Rapids, they can go online at any time during the three weeks and vote for their favorite pieces. While first, second and third place are awarded by popular vote, the Grand Prize is juried for a cash prize of over $100,000.
President of the Hillsdale College art honorary Alpha Rho Tau, Greg Carlson lead a small group of art students north on Oct. 6 to experience ArtPrize.
“It was a great bonding experience,” Carlson said. “It was a great inspiration to channel into our own future endeavors.”
Artist Lindy Crandell, originally from Jonesville, Mich., participated in the event for the second year in a row. For her, ArtPrize is not so much about winning or losing; it is about the experience as a whole.
“It’s wonderful!” Crandell said. “The whole ArtPrize experience is phenomenal. There is no other way in the world for an artist to get this much exposure.”
The art spread around the city took on all shapes, sizes and styles. Many artists showed a thoroughly modern influence and a love for the abstract expressionism of the 1940s. Second place was awarded to a motorized mobile of paper birds, choreographed to modern classical music. Hoards of people crowded onto the fourth story of a building, surrounded by a cloud of the birds, awaiting the show of lights and music that some called “emotionally charged” and “hauntingly beautiful.”
“For me its all about mind games,” Vice President of Alpha Rho Tau John Flo said. “It was really good to get out and look at art and try to figure out what the artist was saying and then to have the chance to read the artist statement was really awesome.”
As members of the honorary traipsed around the streets of downtown, each piece presented a new opportunity to interact with art as well as a new way to view and understand it.
