ArtPrize Day One

So yesterday was the opening of ArtPrize, the competition here in Grand Rapids where over a thousand artists are competing for a quarter of a million dollars. Oni invited me to head around after I got out of class. My camera died halfway through, but I got some pics. I didn't get to do any actual voting 'til I got home since there were so many registrations at the Old Grand Rapids Art Museum that the system shut down.

We started off by heading to the B.O.B. where there were a lot of sculptures outside. It was fenced off, so we headed inside. There was a living statue that winked at me, though his gold monkey was indeed fake. There was a light-up painting I liked and a series of three with manta rays and sharks swimming among a flooded city. My favorites were a Kali statue and a battlefield of what appeared to be Frenzies from the Transformer movie. (They weren't, the style just reminded me of it.)

After that we headed to the river to check out Nessie. We passed what appeared to be the remains of a gypsy caravan. We'd missed the gypsy walk by a few minutes. The walking bridge was covered in sculptures, and it was cool to see one on a rock in the middle of the river.

In front of the Gerald Ford Museum is an ice sculpture in a trailer (to keep it refrigerated) and they have a little one outside they are rebuilding each day.

We met up with Maggie and Mike after at the Old Grand Rapids Art Museum and there was a lot of cool stuff there, including a moving field of metal rods that played music, portraits made of pushpins, and a huge oil painting.

Artspace was more dance club than art gallery, which was disappointing.

We walked down Division for a bit before Oni and Maggie decided to head home. One gallery had a gem mine set up, complete with a miner inside, and we watched him like at a zoo for a bit since he was behind glass and had a little hole to go back inside. At another we were spellbound by one of the Super Happy Funtime Burlesque girls perform an aerial show with a stretch of fabric. All of us particularly liked a table with settings, cameras, and screens that projected a person sitting in the head chair to the "faces" of the other three. There was even a delay so you could watch yourself chatting with the other three and get up bored or huffy.

We glanced in UICA but didn't get a good view since it was crowded and late.

I still would like to make it to the B.O.B. to see Miss Pussykat and Miss Audacious perform with the Devil Dolls.