ArtPrize 10 Winners

ArtPrize 10 has been taking place in Grand Rapids, Michigan over the past few weeks. As usual, Mom was able to see a lot of the art in person - nowhere near all 1,263 of this year's entries, but a decent number nevertheless. We dolls, of course, have not seen any of the art in person, but it's still fun to experience it vicariously through her and through all the photos and videos that show up online. 

The winners of ArtPrize 10 were announced last night. As has been the pattern over the last few years, a jury of art experts gets to choose their winners, and the public gets to vote for theirs. The juror's picks were, as usual, rather out there and not anything we got very enthusiastic about, so I'm not going to go there. I will share the winners of the public vote in its 4 categories, though:

Time-Based Public Vote Winner ($12,500):
Moving Experience by Robert and Tim Shangle

Robert entered ArtPrize as a "living statue." He made himself look like a comic book character who has escaped the pages and ventured into the real world. The above video was playing on a loop in one venue, the police department, and it was filmed by his son Tim. Robert (AKA "Trebor," his name for his character) also wandered around downtown GR during ArtPrize itself - Mom saw him on two separate occasions. Mom appreciated how much he did look like a comic book character but also found him slightly creepy. Hence, she voted for him in the first round of voting (to determine the top 5 in each category) but not in the second round (to determine the winner.)

Her clear favorite time-based entry was this one, Transcendence, but alas, it didn't win. Possibly because it was tucked away in the basement of an old building and didn't get as much exposure.

Installation Public Vote Winner ($12,500):
Sonder by Megan Constance Altieri

The artist took random snippets of conversation she heard over the past two years and turned them into this installation. She hand-stamped each snippet onto an article of clothing to match what each speaker was wearing and then hung them up on clotheslines. In addition to some of the snippets being quite entertaining, this entry is intended to make viewers more aware of, curious about, and empathetic towards the people around them. Hence the title: sonder n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as one's own.

3-D Public Vote Winner ($12,500):
The Phoenix by Joe Butts

The artist may have one of the worst last names ever, but his scrap metal sculpture is quite a sight to behold. It had location (a busy street corner), size, and complexity all going for it, so we weren't too surprised that it was a crowd favorite. Maybe because we've seen so many big sculptures made in a similar style (thanks to a decade's worth of ArtPrizes now) we were not as impressed with this as we might have been a few years back. (We feel that the elegant Lux Maxima, the metal/glass horse who won in the 3D category last year, was more unique, but whatever. At least we have an animal among the winners this year.)

2-D and Grand Prize Public Vote Winner ($200,000):
THE STRING PROJECT by Chelsea Nix & Mariano Cortez

The only one of the winners that Mom actually voted for in round 2 was this one, so she was glad to see the public grand prize go to this entry. The artists, a married couple, traveled around the world to take the 40 photographs that comprise THE STRING PROJECT. (This included a few photos taken in West Michigan, naturally.) The way the photos are displayed, it looks like the string running through each frame is one continuous piece, like all the people holding onto it are linked together. You can see where the artists were going with this, I'm sure. “We feel that besides our cultural and physical differences there are essential things that are similar in all human beings that connect us and make us more similar than we think," explained Nix on their entry's page on the ArtPrize website. 

To our dismay, ArtPrize is moving to a biannual instead of annual schedule moving forward. Hence, ArtPrize 11 won't take place until 2020. We're going to have to come up with something else fun to do next fall, I guess. Maybe make art of our own? Though that's really more Lily's thing...

We will distract ourselves from that big bummer and from the bigger bummer that is the weather's inevitable downward spiral over the next few weeks by posting about our favorite entries. HI2 stuff is bound to get thrown in too, like I'm going to throw in right now.

Our ranch's horse store is currently empty! The +4/6 buckskin Curly mare and the +5/6 gray NCT both sold!

No wonderful new +6/6 wilds to throw any party about, but we did catch double wilds on Desert Isle:

The one below us was this cool Turkoman mare:

It's not every day you find a brindle! =)

The one above us was this handsome pinto Spanish Barb:

Isn't his avatar great? I didn't realize that overo Barb avatars had colored manes and tails. If he was a she, I think we'd have a hard time saying no despite the under +80 stats. But since he's not, I think he'll hang around until he can be ridden bareback and then put up for sale.