Artprize 2012

Every year, about ten minutes from the small town where I live, a giant art festival is held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Art is literally spread all over the city, with larger exhibits in colleges and our local museums, even in eateries, clubs, and the lobbies of hotels. This year, even a level of a parking garage was converted into its own exhibition of art.  We get a few celebrities who attend (Kathy Lee Gifford comes every year) and artwork is submitted from all over the world. Attendees get to vote on what work of art is their favorite. I took pictures of all of my favorites. 

 One of the first ones I saw. I just really loved how their antlers were intertwined. It reminded me of the roots of trees.

 I wasn't able to get a great picture of this one. It's a moving sculpture that actually made it onto the official list of the top 10 on Artprize's website. What happens is, someone puts a quarter into this massive contraption, and traditional opera music plays, as the birds flap their wings and move in circular motion to the music. It was really quite an experience. Even my brother, who hates art in most forms, liked this one. It was just all around cool.

 This is part one of a work from a Norwegian artist. It's a massive field of flowers, made purely from porcelain.

 This is part 2 of the Norwegian work of art. This circle of ceramic flowers is much smaller and doesn't have nearly as much color.

 This one is kind of hard to see, but it was made up of millions upon millions of pieces of thread. How it appeared changed from what angle you were seeing it from. From one angle, it just looks like a bunch of lines without any perceivable color, and from another angle, it looked like a rainbow that started small and progressively got bigger. I tried to take a picture where you could kind of see both extremes. 

I liked this one, just because I felt as though it had a lot of movement and softness. 

 This one was my favorite out of all of them. I just loved the organic lines of the flowers growing through this person's body, and I loved the ambiguity of the form. For those who cannot tell, the person's form is neither female nor male. It has no hair or distinguishing features on its face. Thus, it could be any of us. All of us.

 A bunch of eggs entangled with black string. My personal favorite of all of these are the two separated halves, still attached by criss-crossing strings.

 This one was interactive, made of a bunch of turning blocks. Each block had a part of the big picture, a smaller picture of a child, the child's greatest fear, and one of the child's goals in life.

 This gigantic, Alice-in-Wonderland-esque mural was actually on the side of a bus that operated as a roaming art school. The man took his bus all over the country, offering his services to a variety of students. He called it "the future of learning."

 This actually isn't one of my favorites, it's just a picture of my mom in a giant tube-like sculpture that confused us. And before you ask, yes, there was a note encouraging passers-by to climb inside. Climbing inside didn't help us understand it.

 Created from cut-outs. I love the contrast of the black and white. I love that there is no color on it.

 I just loved the overall effect of this massive wall of debris.

 This is a giant sea-worm made from twigs that was made to appear as if it was crawling out of a sewer drain. I spotted and loved it from afar and actually ended up abandoning my mother for a few minutes just so I could get a picture of him.

 These are a bunch of horses crafted from driftwood that were placed in the river. They're 12 times as beautiful in person.

And last but not least, the penguins! How could I ever say no to penguins??? They're so adorable!!
For more information and the OFFICIAL list of the top 25, 10, etc, go to Artprize.org