Art Prize 2012

The past few years we enjoyed an afternoon checking out ArtPrize in downtown GR.  Usually there are entries lining the streets, filling parking lots, in hotels and museums, even hanging in the air.  Some of the art is very cool to see, other pieces are interesting and some are plain dumb . . . here are a few that caught our eye:

 This was an entire arctic gathering of animals made of junk . . . bowling pins, spatulas, car parts spoons, etc.  Kind of interesting.

The kids thought it was fun to hide behind this one and take pictures . . . although I'm not sure how I feel about Briella the mermaid?!?

 This seal is made out of wood, the artist said he used wood burning to make it look and feel like fur, pretty cool.

 I thought this one was going to be Stephan's favorites, but the next one was his top pick.

The artist was working while everyone watched and they had buckets of sand for kids to play with. Her assistant was spraying the sculpture down with a mist of water to keep it from blowing away.  She also told Stephan they add glue to the water for the final spray.  Gideon just asked me, "When are they going to bonk it down?"  I think he wants to volunteer to help.

 This party of horses is made from sticks and quite impressive (it got votes from the jurors and the public).

Last year there was a family a bears catching fish in the fountain at the Ford Museum, this year the penguins took over.  There were even a few swimming at the top. It is fun to see and I found myself waiting for one of them to jump in!

We aren't really artsy people, but this is a mostly free, mostly family friendly event and we don't get downtown GR too often.  It is fun to see/hear which entries make the top 10 and then the winner . . . We even voted this year for the first time! (Mostly because Stephan did not want the guy with a teepee set up that had a black curtain inside of it to win--yes seriously! People were in line to see inside this thing and I was watching reactions and one kid says "What is that in there?" after he had been in there . . . the artist says "art" then two ladies walked out and whispered to me "It's nothing. Nothing!"  The kids wanted to see so Stephan went in with them and found out it was nothing!)

I think that it is quite interesting that many of the top entries are animals . . . humans are creative, but God is ultimately The Creator and we just can't do much better than the animals He has created!