ArtPrize today announced its registration timeline for our 2012 event, which will run from Sept. 19 through Oct. 7.
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.
ArtPrize, the radically open international art competition and social experiment in Grand Rapids, Mich., is pleased to announce a new award: the ArtPrize Juried Grand Prize.
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.
If you’re not familiar with 5×5 Night, you should be. Like ArtPrize, it’s an incredible experiment taking place in Grand Rapids that is positively impacting our culture.
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.
ArtPrize celebrates the diversity of ideas, voices and the work of hundreds of artists. Now, as we conclude our third year, few things have changed toward that mission. During the past 19 days, an estimated 500,000 people came to Grand Rapids, Mich., not entirely known as an ‘art mecca’ (we’re working on it) and participated in an epic dialog about contemporary art.
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
There’s a lot of you who have spoken your mind on this blog. And for that, we are grateful. ArtPrize is about the dialog that surrounds contemporary art, and among the starting points of that dialog is voting.
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.
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.
Round 1 voting in ArtPrize ends tonight at 11:59 p.m.
If you like something, vote up. If you really want it to win, tell your friends to vote for it too.
After Midnight, we will close voting, which means on Thursday, Sept. 29, when you’re eating your morning cereal and decide to finally vote, you won’t be able to vote!
On Thursday, ArtPrize will audit the results of your vote. We will ensure that all of the “i’s” were dotted and “t”s were crossed and papers signed in preparation of the announcement of our Top 10 finalists.
Join us at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 29 in Rosa Parks Circle to kick off the fun. At 6:00 p.m., Rick DeVos will announce the Top 10.
After the Top 10 are announced, voting will resume. Every voter has ONE VOTE LEFT to use on one of the top 10. (You can change your vote among the top 10 until voting closes for Round 2 at 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, October 5.
Are you activated?
You have until 8:00 p.m. tonight to present your government issued ID at a voter registration site and get activated to vote in Round 1. Voter registration sites will close at 8:00 p.m.
Anyone can still get activated to vote for Round 2 until close of venues next Wednesday, October 6, but those who wait until tomorrow can only vote among the Top 10.
It all starts tonight on the Westside. If you’re looking for free, fun, fantastic exploration in ArtPrize’s largest neighborhood, we know where you should start your journey. Check it out!
Westside Neighborhood – GO TIME!
Friday, Sept. 23;
6:00-8:30 p.m.
Location: Parking lot at 620 Stocking Avenue NW, next to Compucraft
Begin your Westside neighborhood journey at our “GO” Station!
We’re giving away 300 FREE maps along with a snack and beverage when you arrive. We’ll give you instructions and a sticker sheet to begin your journey. Between 8-8:30pm, return with your marked map to the “GO” Station – the first 100 people to visit five or more venues get FREE ArtPrize stuff!
But wait… one important note, you’ll need to make the most of your time seeing art – no freebies will be given away until venues close at 8:00pm!
At the beginning of this summer, we spent a lot of time trying to explain the strange idea and rules for ArtPrize. Apparently, somewhere along the way, people started to get it. As of this post there are over 113 venues and since the beginning of the week we’ve seen over 25 artists a day securing space. It’s growing a bit faster than I expected.
One expectation I had going into ArtPrize was that only a relatively small group of people would be interested in going to the trouble to exhibit art. This is not to say that exhibiting art is boring, but when asking the average person what they’d most like to do this year, they’ll probably say, “Go to Hawaii.”
I assumed it would be largely artists and people active in the art world who would jump at the chance to open a venue. While that is true, with 113 venues and counting, there are many more people who apparently have a latent desire to not only see art, but meet artists and help them exhibit their work. Read More »
Occasionally, I provide a behind the scenes update of what’s going on in the office. I’ve decided to start calling that update, “The Experiment Chronicles” because the point is to expose what we’re learning along the way with this first event, which we’ve often called “The Experiment.”
Local Artists
It’s been an accurate assumption that local artists have an advantage in finding a venue. They live here, they know the territory and know a lot of property owners who have been involved in past art events. However, it’s been exciting to hear how many local artists are planning a new work. Maybe because they know the city intimately, they are using ArtPrize as a chance to do site specific work.
Sponsors
We’ve been talking with potential sponsors since the ArtPrize announcement. Several have expressed interest is using the opportunity to bring in artists they feel passionate about who are not on artprize.org, which would widen out the variety of work showing. We’re excited to see what happens when these works are mixed with all of the other artists who are coming here in a more DIY fashion.
Venues
We’ve seen the matching process start to organically happen. In the last week many artists completed their profile and reached out to venues. Admittedly, it has not been as smooth as we had hoped, but we’ve been tackling a list of changes to the site to streamline the process. Some changes are already made, some are coming soon and others we’ll have to save for next year because we’ve still got to build the voting mechanism.
We watched this video over lunch today and it really got us talking. The experiment is basically thus: Take a painting that has a wide appeal in the art world, which would sell for a million dollars at auction, and put it on the side of a building without anyone knowing. Will it draw an audience the same way it would in a gallery or museum?
The results were startling. Only 4% of passers by stopped and looked at the piece. Experiments like this, obviously, get us thinking a lot about ArtPrize. ArtPrize is creating a context that’s opposite from The Tuymans Experiment. In fact, we’re creating a new context for the city to be seen as an art gallery. (It’s more likely attendees will stop and wonder if a parking meter is a sculpture, rather than assuming a work isn’t significant because it’s not in a museum.) This raises a lot of questions about how people ascribe value to a work based on context. The most obvious value is monetary.
Imagine in the experiment above if a velvet rope had quartered off the painting and a security guard were posted next to it 24 hours a day. Suddenly, the feeling of value–like you experience in a museum–is boosted. I argue a lot more people would have stopped as the painting drew importance to itself by virtue of it having its own security staff. How will people ascribe value to a work if the price tag is not readily available and it’s not showing in a context where the price tag is implied, like a museum? Will they seek out people in-the-know to educate them? Will they go by their gut? Will they talk to the artists about their motivations and create a personal connection?
It excites us that ArtPrize could be a context where the market rate of the work plays second fiddle to another way of ascribing value.
ArtPrize today announced its registration timeline for our 2012 event, which will run from Sept. 19 through Oct. 7.
If you’re not familiar with 5×5 Night, you should be. Like ArtPrize, it’s an incredible experiment taking place in Grand Rapids that is positively impacting our culture.
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 
If you like something, vote up. If you really want it to win, tell your friends to vote for it too. 