Doll Diaries: ArtPrize 9 Public Vote Winners

The winners of ArtPrize 9 were announced on Friday night! The jury of art experts and the public each got to vote for their favorites from this year's 1,348 entries. I'm not going to bother telling you about the winning entries from the jurors. Being a casual art appreciator who tends to shut down when things get too "out there," I'm usually not on the same wavelength they are. I find the public vote winners more interesting. So here we go:

Time-Based Public Vote Winner ($12,500):
Red Dirt Rug Monument by Rena Detrixhe

Yes, this is indeed a rug made out of red dirt. The artist brought over 200 gallons of sifted red Oklahoman soil to Grand Rapids and created the rug during ArtPrize. All of the designs you see were formed by her carefully pressing chunks of shoe soles into the dirt. Pretty impressive, right? Mom didn't get to see the rug until it was already finished, but on the plus side, this meant she got to go inside the roped-off area and see it up close. The artist says that her work "embodies the complicated history of our relationship to nature, particularly in [her] state of residence, Oklahoma, where human presence has deeply altered the landscape." The jurors apparently were as impressed by Red Dirt Rug Monument as the public voters were, because they also chose this entry as their time-based winner.

Installation Public Vote Winner ($12,500):
Oil + Water by Ryan Spencer Reed

The artist took this photo during last year's protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. He presumably then printed the image on these panels, only he modified it to look like it's sort of an oil slick. When the panels are suspended just under the surface of the Grand River, it does indeed resemble an oil slick floating on the water's surface. According to the ArtPrize website, it symbolizes the importance of clean water, the struggle for native rights, climate change, and fossil fuel dependency. That's all fine and good, but I was not overly impressed by the piece itself because of the way the panels clumped up on the sides.

3-D Public Vote Winner ($12,500):
Lux Maximus by Daniel Oropeza

I could hardly believe that a horse sculpture was the public's favorite! It was one of my and my sisters' favorites too, of course. He is made from metal and glass fused together in intricate patterns. Thanks to the glass and some lights within, he becomes even more impressive at night. Mom was fortunate enough to get to see him both in the dark and during the day.

2-D and Grand Prize Public Vote Winner ($200,000):
A. Lincoln by Richard Schlatter

This is an 8 x 12 foot portrait of Abe Lincoln made out of 24,000+ pennies, which are all heads up, of course. His "white" shirt is made from steel pennies from 1943, and the rest are various shades of copper pennies dated from 1909 (the first year pennies started having Lincoln on them) through 2017.
The combination of this piece's impressive size and its prime location in a well-visited fancy downtown hotel definitely boosted its chances, I'd say, so I was not super surprised that it won the whole shebang. It is pretty cool, and I am happy it did so well. (Obviously, I would have liked to see Lux Maximus win the grand prize even more, but at least my least favorite of the 4, Oil + Water, didn't snag it...)

I'm eager to share my favorite entries with you - there was so much great art on display this year! Like it or not, I think all 4 of us sisters will be posting about our own personal top 5 in the near future.

While we're on the topic of art, HI2 recently introduced a new horse breed, the Dutch Tuigpaard, to the game. It's a harness breed I didn't know much about. According to HI2, they have been bred to be "uphill," which means they have proportionately longer forelegs than other breeds. I don't find it dramatic enough to look weird, but yeah, they do have long forelegs. Their hind legs seem quite long though too.

The first person I talked to about the new breed on HI2 called them "hideous." While the art doesn't exactly wow me, I definitely wouldn't go that far. In fact, the more I see them, the more they are growing on me. Here are my sisters' and my favorite Tuig colors as seen in the BBB: