The ArtPrize platform creates a system that values creativity, experimentation and above all, collaboration. Artists are encouraged to build a relationship and partner with a venue as early as possible to create a memorable and successful installation. Registration dates include:

Venue Registration
Open: Monday, March 12 (Noon EDT)
Close: Thursday April 12 (5:00 p.m. EDT)

Artist Registration/Connections Open
Monday, April 23 (Noon EDT)

Artist Registration Close
Thursday, May 24 (5:00 p.m. EDT)

Connections Period Close
Thursday, June 14 (5:00 p.m. EDT)

There are few differences between the 2011 and 2012 registration process, key changes include simultaneous Artist Registration and Connections Period, allowing artists to immediately coordinate with a venue upon registration. Connections will remain open beyond Artist Registration until June 14.

Any art proposed for installation in the Grand River, which runs through the center of the ArtPrize district, must be submitted to the city of Grand Rapids and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) according to the following schedule:

Pre-application filed with the City of Grand Rapids
Monday, March 5

Application filed with the DEQ
Friday, March 16

The DNRE will process the application using the following steps:

Public notice period begins: Friday, March 30
Public notice period ends: Friday, April 20
Public hearing, if requested: Friday, May 18
Required time for comments: Tuesday, May 29

Permit Decision
Thursday, June 7

This process allows the State of Michigan and City of Grand Rapids to review proposed work and ensure that the installation meets specific criteria relevant to the environmental, structural and navigability impact on the river.

In ArtPrize 2011, Mia Tavonatti, of Orange Co. Calif., captured the top prize of $250,000 for her work, Crucifixion. Chris LaPorte of Grand Rapids, Mich. won the top prize in 2010 with Cavalry, American Officers, 1921, and Ran Ortner of Brooklyn, N.Y. won in 2009 for his work Open Water No. 24.

From Scott Watkins, with AEG:

“The study provides a comprehensive assessment of event attendance, visitor spending, local spending by the ArtPrize organization, and the economic impacts that accrue beyond the initial expenditures of visitors and the host organization. It also accounts for economic substitution. The analysis illustrates the new economic activity attributable to ArtPrize and does not double count spending in the area that would have otherwise occurred if the event was not held.”

The full report can be found here. Read the whole thing.

ArtPrize is supportive of this research study. From our perspective, communities thrive when people are given the flexibility and encouragement to be creative and a population is provided with the freedom to voice their opinions, and to just plain have fun. The Anderson study shows that small experiments like ArtPrize can grow to have significant impact, and we are pleased that our region is thriving as a result.

We hope 2012 will be an even bigger year for ArtPrize, with the tweaks we announced earlier this month:

• self-sustainability
• enabling the “credible mass” within the “critical mass”
• empowered professional voices

ArtPrize thanks everyone for a successful 2011, and we look forward to seeing you in the new year!

The $100,000 award will be added to a revised list of public and juried prizes that will be distributed at the end of the 19-day event.

ArtPrize 2012 will take place Sept. 19 – Oct. 7, 2012.

With its public vote and juried awards, ArtPrize explores the tension between professional and populist in an epic conversation. In 2011, nearly 400,000 people visited Grand Rapids to engage with the work and ideas of nearly 1,600 artists. The new award changes the dynamic of the competition, and increases the total awards the event distributes to $550,000, making it the largest total prize purse for art in the world.

In addition to the Juried Grand Prize, ArtPrize will also increase its other juried awards to $20,000 each. The organization selected five categories to recognize:

• Two-Dimensional
• Three-Dimensional
• Time and Performance
• Urban Space
• Venue

The increased commitment to juried awards will change the dynamic of the event and sets up a purposeful dialog between the opinions of arts professionals and the public, focusing on the artists’ work. Jurors for all of the professional awards will be announced in the spring, prior to artist registration.

“For the past three years, ArtPrize has set itself apart by empowering the public and giving them a critical voice, but the success of the event is based on the exchange of artists’ ideas,” said DeVos. “We want ArtPrize to be accessible for everyone, so we hope the new awards will help artists understand our goals and encourage them bring new ideas to the event.”

The changes in Juried Prizes will result in a revision of the ArtPrize Public Vote Awards:
Public Vote Award Revisions

• Top Prize 2011: $250,000 2012: $200,000
• 2nd 2011: $100,000 2012: $75,000
• 3rd 2011: $50,000 2012: $50,000
• 4th-10th 2011: $7,000 2012: $5,000

The prize total for the public awards in 2012 will be $350,000, vastly outweighing the juried awards at $200,000, and keeping the organization’s focus on the community.

“The engagement of the community continues to be at the forefront of ArtPrize’s success,” added Catherine Creamer, executive director of ArtPrize. “Nearly 400,000 people participated in ArtPrize in 2011, not because we told them art mattered, but because we create a system where THEY matter to art.”

ArtPrize 2011 had more than 38,000 registered voters who submitted 383,000 total votes. With the increase of smartphones, mobile voting via the ArtPrize iPhone and new Android apps increased 62 percent.

ArtPrize 2011 began Sept. 21 with 1,582 artists from 39 countries and 43 U.S. states installing their work at 164 venues in a three-square-mile district in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Artist and venue registration for ArtPrize 2012 will be announced after the beginning of the year. For more information, visit www.artprize.org.

Everyone has their story of Fred Meijer. Many of them involve purple cows, penny ponies or incredible deals. But Fred’s most lasting legacy goes beyond his role as a retail innovator. His goal was to make our world a better place, and he did this by helping communities explore the relationship between art and nature.

In 2005 The Wall Street Journal wrote, “There’s nothing quite like Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park this side of the Kröller-Müller Museum and Sculpture Park in The Netherlands.” This was, and still is, a significant endorsement for an organization that is little more than 15 years old.

Fred originally saw Meijer Gardens as a place to house his growing collection of Marshall Fredericks sculptures, but he ended up establishing something much greater: one of the nation’s most significant sculpture experiences. The success of Meijer Gardens is something that other art museums and botanic gardens around the world have worked to emulate in their organizations, but few have been able to recreate the same duality between art and nature that Meijer Gardens has found.

In fewer than two decades, Meijer Gardens has helped bring countless artist voices to the United States, many for the first time, and paired their work with our ever-changing Midwest landscapes. This commitment to challenging the public with new ideas has become Fred’s lasting legacy.

Fred’s legacy is something at we all can aspire toward–creating new ideas, big ideas, ideas that can come from anyone and be experimented with anywhere.

Fred believed in the endless possibilities of our cultural landscape. We will miss him dearly.

Here’s the basics: the platform invites five presenters to show five slides for five minutes to five judges for a chance at $5,000.

Among the judges is ArtPrize’s own Catherine Creamer, our executive director, and an entrepreneur as well as an artist in her own right. Catherine joins four others, including Rick DeVos, Sam Cummings, principal and managing partner at CWD Real Estate, Jay Frankhouse, partner at Fuel-D, and Diana Sieger, president of the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, For more on Catherine’s background, and the bios of the other judges go here.

In the same way that ArtPrize believes that anyone can be an artist, 5×5 believes that anyone can have a good idea for a business or a project. The platform is specifically designed to help each one of us to take small risks by lowering the first barrier to entrepreneurship–getting people to listen.

This is also the first event where all 5×5 presenters have been chosen by the community. You can still vote for presenters at the 5×5 Night website. Sign up and vote today. We’ll all see how the experiment unfolds.

5×5 Night returns the Cook Auditorium in the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 5:00-7:30PM. $5 admission. More here.

It’s getting to be that time of the year. A season of giving that everyone loves.

People in West Michigan love to shop local. ArtPrize has listened to the requests from our friends, and so for the first time ever, we will re-open The HUB Store at 41 Sheldon Blvd. for holiday shopping starting at Noon on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011.

And to make things even more magical, most of the store’s iconic ArtPrize merchandise has been marked down 40 percent.

According to the 3/50 Project, a small-business advocacy group, for every $100 spent in locally owned, independent stores, $68 returns to the community. Imagine the potential impact, since every purchase in the ArtPrize store will help support art in our community and help keep the ArtPrize event free for everyone.

The ArtPrize Store will open Tuesday, Nov. 15 through Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. The store will be generously staffed by volunteers and therefore closed Thanksgiving Day and Friday, Nov. 25.

HOURS:
November: Tuesday – Friday; Noon – 6:00 p.m.
December: Tuesday – Saturday; Noon – 6:00 p.m.

LOCATION:
The ArtPrize HUB Store
41 Sheldon Blvd.
Grand Rapids, Mich.

This video, produced by Brian Kelly, was shown at the ArtPrize 2011 Winners Announcement. The music is “I Got a Thing” by Hanni el Khatib.

The level of engagement was record-setting. At a time when many are drawn to professional or college sports, or other events, hundreds of thousands of people of all ages and from all backgrounds sought out their favorite works and voted. Jurors, experts in their field, came from across the country, to select the works they felt best represented a particular category. Together we explored the tension between public and professional in an open dialog.

In all, 18 winners were awarded nearly $500,000, with the top prize of $250,000 going to Mia Tavonatti of Santa Ana, Calif., for her mosaic, Crucifixion.

The conversation was epically epic. Made possible by the voters, our partners, the artists and the venues. Thank you for your commitment. Together we are creating a place where engaging with art and engaging with each other is valued. Because of you, no other event is like this in the world.

Together, let’s congratulate all of our 1,582 artist participants, including our winners:

Popular Vote

• Mia Tavonatti, Santa Ana, Calif. Crucifixion
• Tracy Van Duinen, Chicago, Ill., Metaphorest
• Lynda Cole, Ann Arbor, Mich. Rain
• Laura Alexander, Columbus, Ohio, The Tempest II
• Paul Baliker, Palm Coast, Fla., Ocean Exodus
• Ritch Branstrom, Rapid River, Mich., “Rusty” A sense of direction/self portrait
• Sunti Pichetchaiyakul, Big Fork, Mont., President Gerald Ford Visits ArtPrize
• Robert Shangle, Sparta, Mich., Under Construction
• Bill Secunda, Butler, Pa., Mantis Dreaming
• Llew (Doc) Tilma, Wayland, Mich., Grizzlies on the Ford

Juried Awards

• Two-Dimensional — Mimi Kato, St. Louis, Mo., One Ordinary Day of an Ordinary Town
• Three-Dimensional — Michelle Brody, New York, N.Y., Nature Preserve
• International — Shinji Turner-Yamamoto, Cincinnati, Ohio, DISAPPEARANCES – an eternal journey
• Time-Based — Caroline Young, Chicago, Ill., Remember:Replay:Repeat
• Urban Space — Catie Newell, Detroit, Mich., Salvaged Landscape
• Sustainability — Laura Milkins, Tucson, Ariz., Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes
• Ox-Bow Residency — Evertt Beidler, Portland, Ore., Progressive Movement(s)
• Venue — SiTE:LAB, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Your vote is critical. You have until 11:59 p.m. on Wed., Oct. 5, 2011 to vote on which Top 10 artist will win ArtPrize 2011.

How to vote:

1. Sign in to artprize.org
2. Vote for one of the Top 10

You can also cast your Top 10 vote by texting the artist up vote number to 808080 or using the ArtPrize app on either the iPhone or Android platforms.

If you have not activated your voting status in person at the event, head to a registration site ASAP. They’ll set you (and your mobile device) up fast.

Laura Alexander
The Tempest II

Paul Baliker
Ocean Exodus

Ritch Branstrom
“Rusty” A sense of direction/self portrait of the artist

Lynda Cole
Rain

Sunti Pichetchaiyakul
President Gerald Ford Visits ArtPrize

Bill Secunda
“Mantis Dreaming”

LiveStatue and Friends – Robert Shangle and Jasper Shangle
Under Construction

Mia Tavonatti
Crucifixion

Llew (Doc) Tilma
Grizzlies on the Ford

The Metaphorest Project
Tracy Van Duinen, Andy Bellomo, Todd Osborne, Phil Schuster
Metaphorest