Tag Archives: ArtPrize Nine

Grand Rapids Art Museum offers free studio events for kids at ArtPrize Nine

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By Crystal Chesnik

GRAM Studio Programs Manager

 

Kids can get into the ArtPrize Nine action this weekend at the Grand Rapids Art Museum’s (GRAM) drop-in studios.

 

“Mighty Chrysanthemum Tree” by Mel Watkins

The GRAM’s ArtPrize drop-in studios will feature a project based on one of its ArtPrize exhibits, Mighty Chrysanthemum Tree by Mel Watkins.  The piece is based on the artist’s love and respect for the trees and flowers surrounding her farmhouse in rural southern Illinois.  The piece has a menacing aspect to it, because even though nature is beautiful, it can also be deadly. “Mighty Chrysanthemum Tree” imagines a tree-sized handful of Chrysanthemums swaying ominously overhead.

 

Kids and families will be able to create their own beautiful, and even a bit menacing, flower prints using stamps they can craft from clay. In addition, the GRAM has created a large-scale, collaborative flower garden on the walls of its studio. Guests can use their stamps to add their own unique flower to the flower garden.

 

The event is free and open during the last weekend of ArtPrize Nine, from 1-4 p.m. on both Saturday, Oct. 7, and Sunday, Oct. 8.  There is no need to register in advance, but more information can be found at artmuseumgr.org or by calling 616-831-1000.

 

ArtPrize piece on ‘Flint’ receiving attention from artists, public

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“Flint” by Ti-Rock Moore is on display at Fountain Street Church as part of the church’s ArtPrize Nine exhibition.

By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma

joanne@wktv.org

 

ArtPrize has barely been open a week and Ti-Rock Moore’s piece has already been called “moving” and “powerful.”

 

The piece, titled “Flint” is brown water constantly flowing from a bright white water fountain. The purpose of the piece, signals the ongoing situation in the majority black town, as well as, the extreme limitations placed on communities of color due to flawed infrastructures that privilege the needs of affluent and of the predominantly white communities, according to Moore’s ArtPrize artist statement. In 2014, lead was discovered in the Flint water system after cost-cutting measures. The city still does not have safe water to drink for all of its citizens.

 

Moore’s piece, which is on display as part of the Fountain Street Church ArtPrize Nine exhibition, recently receive the American Civil Liberties Union Award during a special reception at the church for ArtPrize artists and friends.

 

“Our Constitution provides for equal protect of the law,” said the jurors’ statement. “Civil rights laws protect against discrimination based on age, race, religion, gender, disability, and national origin. Ti-Rock Moore’s art reveals a stunning example of injustice against people of color based on the condition of municipal finances in the City of Flint, Michigan. People were poisoned because of money.”

 

Born and raised in New Orleans’ French Quarter, Moore followed disparate career paths before emerging in 2014 with protest works created, in part, in response to the devastating, lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina. At that time, Moore renamed herself in homage to colorful and controversial twentieth-century painter Noel Rockmore, a New Yorker turned New Orleanian who, like Moore, had been the child of artists. Moore’s self-identification (petit or ‘tit in local parlance) with the mercurial Rockmore as a kind of spiritual protégé positions her within both local history and artistic traditions, while her work focuses on dismantling the structures that support racism.

 

Artist Ti-Rock Moore

In “Flint,” the public water fountain has long been a passive symbol of separatism in the United States, one of the more visible manifestations of the Jim Crow era. Although the legal dismantling of the Jim Crow system of apartheid took place more than half a century ago, The Unites States remains deeply divided by race and class, according to a press release from Fountain Street Church. In such a volatile historical moment, the role of the artist is paramount, even essential, as a voice that both incites and instructs all of us to not remain complacent and to act upon our beliefs and stand up for what is moral and just, the press release states. If not now, we might ask ourselves, when? We are in just such a moment that requires—no, demands our attention and our action: to either squelch the flames of hatred and intolerance once and for all, or to stand by and watch as we reduce everything to embers.

 

Fountain Street Church is one of a few ArtPrize venues that award cash prizes to its participating artists. Along with the ACLU Award, which is a $1,000, the church also award a Social Action Committee Award, which was presented to Patrick Foran, Bufafalo, New York, for “State of Exception.” “We were fascinated by how Patrick Foran took iconic media imagery and, with an economy of means, presented a triptych full of foreboding. He reminds us of the power of imagery to form our understanding of the news we are bombarded by each day. The scale of the images and the mastery of craft help crystallize his powerful statement.”

 

The jurors were Kendall College of Art and Design Professor Emeritus and artist Darlene Kaczmarczyk and artist, social activist, and dedicated ACLU supporter Max Matteson. The jurors also presented two $250 Special Recognition Awards to Rebekah Modrak, of Ann Arbor, for “TheImplicit Jacques Panis on Shinola’s Quest to Revive American Manufacturing,” and Nick Reszet, of Reno, Nevada, for “Transitus.”

 

Twenty-six artists are featured at Fountain Street Church, 24 Fountain Ave. NE, all who have works that represent the venue’s theme “Art to Change the World: Inspiring Social Justice.” The exhibit is open during regular ArtPrize hours, noon to 8 p.m. Monday – Saturday and noon – 6 p.m. Sunday. For more information about Fountain Street Church and its ArtPrize exhibition, visit http://www.artprize.org/fountain-street-church

Fishes, color-in-art, just some of the ArtPrize offerings from Kentwood, Wyoming artists

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By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma

joanne@wktv.org

 

If you head down to ArtPrize this year, chances are you won’t be able to miss the large group of fish swimming across the Holiday Inn Grand Rapids Downtown.

 

The piece, which faces Pearl Street across from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum and near the U.S. 131 entrance/exit ramps, is the ArtPrize entry of artist and Kentwood Public School teacher Jerry Berta.

 

Berta worked with students from the Kentwood Public Schools. Students glued laser cut scraps together for the fish which were arranged to create a giant wave of fish, just like a school of fish swimming together. According to Berta’s artist statement on the ArtPrize website, the piece – titled “We Are All Different Fish But We All Swim Together!” – is about diversity and how people may be different but they can work together to create a better world.

 

“This is one of the biggest pieces at ArtPRize created by the most diverse student body in the state,” Berta said in his statement. Kentwood Public Schools has more than 70 different languages spoken at its buildings with the City of Kentwood know of its diverse population with residents from such countries as Vietnam, Korea, and Bosnia.

 

Students, staff, and parents from Kentwood’s Discovery, Meadowlawn, Explorer and Bowen elementary schools helped bring this piece together. Students from Valleywood Middle School, under the guidance of Alicia Fuller, and East Kentwood High School, under the guidance of Jon Bouck, and students from Charlevoix’s St. Mary’s School, also contributed to the project.

 

Berta, who lives in Rockford and is the man behind Dinerland and Rosie’s Diner, is just one of several artists representing the Wyoming and Kentwood areas at this year’s ArtPrize taking place in downtown Grand Raids through Oct. 8.

 

Marking its ninth year, ArtPrize is an open, independently organized international art competition that takes place 19 days in the fall. More than $500,000 in prizes are awarded each year which includes a $200,000 prize awarded by a public vote and another $200,000 prize awarded by a jury of art experts. Round 1 voting is currently underway until Sept. 30. On Oct. 1, the Final 20 are announced with Round 2 voting for just those in the Final 20 opening. Round 2 voting closes Oct. 5 with winners announced at the ArtPrize Awards.

 

Also having an entry in this year’s event is Godfrey Lee Public Schools kindergarten teacher Susan Sheets Odo, whose piece ,“A Colorful Michigan,” is at Grand Woods Lounge, 77 Grandville Ave. SW. Odo, who is also a Wyoming Public Schools board member, said in her artist statement that “A Colorful Michigan” is an interactive coloring piece. Featuring landmarks of Michigan mixed with designs, mandalas, floral patterns, and patterns found in the different cultures of the people who live in West Michigan, visitors are invited to leave their mark by helping to color the piece.

 

Wyoming Public Schools mentor Khalilah Yvonne hopes to encourage youth all over the world to stand up and let their voices be heard through her piece “Silence Broken.” Located at Grand Rapids City Hall, 300 Monroe Ave. NW, Apt. 4, the piece is based on Yvonne’s own personal experience of being a victim of sexual assault, according to her artist statement.

 

If you head over to Grand Valley Artists, Inc., at 1345 Monroe Ave. NW, 140, you will be able to see Wyoming resident Nona (Voss) Bushman’s unique jewelry pieces. A graduate of Wyoming Park High School and Western Michigan University, Bushman’s piece is “Lost in Your Beauty.” Also showing at Grand valley Artists, Inc. is Wyoming resident Katherine Kreutziger’s painting “Autumn Hunt of a Lone Wolf.”

 

Other local artists are: Wyoming resident Nicole Bluekamp’s “Intoxication of Passion” is at Rockwell Republic, 45 S. Division Ave., and Wyoming resident Karin Nelson’s piece “Trees in the Park” is at the Women’s City Club, 254 E. Fulton St.

 

There are more than 170 venues for this year’s ArtPrize and one of them is not that far from Wyoming and Kentwood. For the first time, the Gerald R. Ford International Airport is a venue featuring seven artists with works in the upstairs observation deck, east end of the terminal building, and outdoors under the trademark GFIA canopy and welcome wall.

 

The pieces featured at the airport are “TOTEM of a Michigan Woman” by Sharron Ansell, of Kalamazoo; “Sanutario de la Monarch,” by Dalice Ceballos, of Mexico; “We are Fruitport Building on a Legacy,” by Fruitport High School Visual Arts Team; “Our Love Connects All Happiness,” by Haruko Furukawa, of New Zealand; “Fly Away With Me,” by Mariia Rykhlovska, of Los Angeles; “Elements of a Japanese Garden,” by Judy A. Steiner, of Grand Rapids; and “Kitty Hawk,” by Brett Walker, of East Tawas, Mich.

 

Just further up on the East Beltline, the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, 1000 E. Beltline NE, is also a venue again this year. For more on what is featured at the Gardens, click here.

 

To learn more about the artists, venues, voting or to register to vote in this year’s ArtPrize competition, go to artprize.org.

ArtPrize Nine visitors will unleash their creative spirits through ArtPrize Labs

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ArtPrize Labs offers hands-on contemporary art experiences to event visitors of all ages, encouraging them to not only experience the event but also to create works of their own.

 

By ArtPrize

 

ArtPrize, the independently organized art competition recognized as the world’s largest annual public art event, today announced 2017 programming for ArtPrize Labs, sponsored by Grand Valley State University, Herman Miller Cares, and Switch—which will encourage ArtPrize visitors to not only experience the art, but also to unleash their creative spirits at the ninth annual event and create works of their own. ArtPrize Nine is slated to return to Grand Rapids, Michigan from September 20-October 8, 2017.

“ArtPrize provides opportunities for people of all ages to discover, learn and create in a city transformed by art and overflowing with creative energy ,” said Becca Guyette, ArtPrize Education Director. “Through ArtPrize Labs, we seek to offer hands-on contemporary art experiences—and spark the curiosity of the next generation of art lovers.”

Returning for a third year are the ArtPrize Labs Studios—with two locations for ArtPrize Nine, inside the ArtPrize HUB/HQ and at Rosa Parks Circle. The drop-in studios provide materials for visitors of all ages to rest, unwind and explore their creative inspiration in a self-directed way. The studio at Rosa Parks Circle will be open daily from Noon-6 p.m., and the HUB/HQ location from 11 a.m.-6 p.m., daily during the event.

Additionally, ArtPrize Labs will once again feature Studio Events with hands-on activities at Rosa Parks Circle each Saturday during the event from Noon-3 p.m. Each event will feature different creative experiments including, a large collaborative cardboard installation, a 20-foot sharpie mural and a paint catapult.

On September 23, visitors can join ArtPrize Labs and Herman Miller Cares in building a gigantic temporary cardboard installation at Rosa Parks Circle. On September 30, ArtPrize Labs and Newell Brands will present a fun-filled afternoon of drawing and coloring, with visitors working together to create a large-scale Sharpie® mural. On October 7, Air Zoo will join ArtPrize Labs to send paint flying from two catapult systems, launching paint-covered objects at a canvas to create colorful, collaborative impact art.

Returning for a second year is the ArtPrize Labs Mobile Workshop, presented by Herman Miller Cares. The ArtPrize Labs Mobile Workshop, which unfolds from a bicycle, will tour around the ArtPrize district throughout the 19-day event—bringing pop-up art-making activities to thousands of visitors, all done with repurposed materials.

Visitors are also invited to attend ArtPrize Labs Partner Programs, with a variety of hands-on art making programs produced by leading arts and cultural organizations throughout the 19-day event. ArtPrize Labs Partners include Artists Creating Together, GRKids.com, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids Children’s Museum, and Lions & Rabbits.

Complete details on ArtPrize Labs events and programming is available at artprize.org/learn.