We're Judges at the Richest Art Contest Ever!

After being on the coast of one of the great lakes for two months, we are finally heading inland for some time away from the beach. We drove about an hour south and into the interior of Michigan, passing through acres of farmland and billowing clouds. We are now parked in a tiny city campground in Otsego, Michigan

With just a couple campsites in the park, we were lucky to get one of the first-come-first-served-concrete-pad-water-and-electric sites. We had to go to the town's police station to pay our $10 camping fee. We really didn't find much to do around Otsego, but we're using this location to make a day-trip drive into the nearby city of Grand Rapids. As you can see in the picture below, the rapids really don't look that grand, but Mark is looking grand as he looks over the Grand River.

We are here to see the art that has filled a three mile area of downtown Grand Rapids. For three weeks each year, this city hosts ArtPrize, the biggest festival of its kind. Artists from all over the world have submitted their art to be put on display at public places all over downtown.

Their incentive to bring their best piece of art (like this ten-foot-tall metal piece on a downtown street corner

or this detailed carving from cherry wood), is the prize money. ArtPrize is the richest art competition anywhere.

More than $500,000 in prize money will be awarded during ArtPrize. It will go to the best art, and this pieced quilt representing the Pacific Ocean's varying depths, is vying for that money. The neatest part is we get to help with the judging to determine who wins some of that cash! Did we mention that each one of the half million people that usually attend ArtPrize also get to vote on the people's choice award?

Around 1,200 pieces of art are displayed all over the city, but most can be found within a three-mile square. For example, we found this black-lit collection of carefully strung fluorescent string art in the basement of a local tavern.

Not too far away, we found this portrait of all the late-night television hosts together at the "Late Night Bar." What you can't tell from this distance, is that the picture below is made up of 200,000 pieces of duct tape.

It's easier to see the detail if we zoom into Johnny Carson's eye to see how the tiny rectangles of tape are layered to make the shading of the image. It's like the cathedral mosaics we have seen, but with duct tape instead of pieces of glass.

About half of the ArtPrize money is awarded based on the opinions of professional art critics with impressive academic degrees. When we heard their short list of finalists, we didn't agree with them at all. But the good news is that the other half of this generous artprize money is based on the votes of the general public. That's us! So when we found a really cool piece like this statue of liberty, we could consider giving our vote to it.

We were puzzled to imagine how they managed to collect license plates from all over the country that just happened to have all the words they needed, including a bible verse. Then we read the artist's statement and saw that they fashioned these incredibly life-like plates themselves, even adding rust and dents to fool us.

We had a map indicating where all the entries were displayed, and it was a treasure hunt of sorts to find them in bank lobbies, apartment buildings, restaurants, etc. Just becoming new grandparents, we were both drawn to this very life-like graphite close-up of a baby.

We found more displayed at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, affectionately known to the locals as "GRAM." We took this picture by the entrance, just because Denisa is hoping to be affectionately known as Gram by her grandchildren.

We enjoyed the art inside the GRAM. Who would be inspired to create a metal box with intricate patterns, knowing that a single bulb inside would make beautiful shadows on the white walls and ceiling around it?

We took our job of casting our vote very seriously, finding as many entries as possible in our single day. We found this collection of wild animals among the the chandeliers of the grand lobby of a downtown hotel. It's hard to tell from here, but those wild animals are made out of barbed wire.

We found this portrait of a native American hanging at the police station. It is entirely made of pieces of arrowheads.

This panther portrait was stunning,

especially when we looked closer and saw that it was made from fine silk thread sewn onto the canvas.

This piece was made entirely of match sticks. The black sections of the portrait were formed from match sticks that were lit and allowed to burn.

This map of Michigan helped us to see the topography of the forests and mountains of this state we have been traveling in for over a month. It is made of tiny rolls of colored paper.

From a distance this portrait uses different shades and colors to make the finished portrait.

When we look closer at the eye, we see the shading is accomplished with buttons.

Likewise, this giant poster of Derek Jeter all blends to make his convincing portrait.

But looking closer at his ears, we see that the entire portrait was made from little squares cut out of the pages of shiny magazines. All these textures and techniques make art fun!

This bright picture caught our eye, and we assumed it was painted with a traditional paint brush.

But when we looked closer, the entire work is made up of layers of paint drizzled off a piece of copper wire to make the texture and colors that we loved.

As we made our way across the Grand River, we found some outdoor art entries that requested that you sit on them. The herd of red alligators was being enjoyed by young and old alike. (We're not saying which category we put ourselves into.)

Other ArtPrize entries requested that we sniff them--like these pictures of favorite foods complete with a pipe on top wafting a matching smell.

Others ask that you stand in front of them, and become part of the art!

This one asked that you contribute your own artistic talent to their work. This global picture is missing some background stars, so we climbed up on that chair and each added a dot of star-light.

So now we can say that we helped to paint one of the entries at ArtPrize.

When we noticed that these rhinos had a texture that looked like rhino skin, the artist encouraged us to touch it. They are painted over a base of sand that he incorporates into the shading and texture of the picture.

We're now in the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum, where we found this larger-than-life portrait of Jesus, and the new-Christian artist that was inspired to paint it.

We had heard good things about this museum, and wanted to see it. The good news is that the $12 entry fee is waived during the three weeks of ArtPrize judging, so we got to take this picture of President Ford's oval office for free.

A local volunteer told us that fifteen years ago, most parts of downtown Grand River were pretty sketchy. Some impressive amounts of money has revitalized abandoned buildings and brought new businesses to this area. Now it's a great place to stroll and spend the day. Hosting ArtPrize has brought huge crowds of people to downtown, and they're expecting around 500,000 visitors this year. Some of the art entries are outside, including this painted two-piece metal outline of Michigan--its upper and lower peninsulas.

Some of the art is harder to appreciate, like this giant metal hand.

This outdoor exhibit made us giggle. It included rows and rows of clotheslines filled with garments with random phrases on them. Again, we had to read the artist's explanation to find that she had recorded snippets of conversation she overheard from passing strangers walking down the street. She printed those small pieces of random conversation on garments that matched the clothing worn by the person talking.

Mark is standing beside another piece of interesting art. It was even more interesting when this comic book character moved and you found out it was a real person.

Throughout downtown, bright displays encouraged public judges like us to add to the art. Denisa added "Wandering His Wonders" to this bright display.

So how in the world will we ever decide on who to award our precious vote? Many of the artists have a collection of calling cards beside their work, as a little reminder for all the public voters to take home. This was our collection of some of the pieces we liked the best.

We have to say that we aren't great art critics, but we really enjoyed our day at ArtPrize. We understand now why so many people flock to the streets of Grand Rapids each year. It's fun! For the ten years since the contest began, this has become the best attended public art event in the world. We were blessed with beautiful weather and a free parking space, so we didn't move our car all day. Even though we only saw a fraction of the art pieces, we got almost ten miles of exercise before our day was over.  At the end of the day we were tired, but we felt as important as the rest of the half-million people that will be judging ArtPrize this year.