I love Artprize! I’m completely enthralled while walking around Grand Rapids viewing the creativity that has exploded from people’s souls. If I could, I would spend every waking hour taking everything in. The scope of the thing is intimidating. There is so much to look at, to experience, that its impossible to feel completely justified in my votes. I have a sense of guilt in my choices of what to vote for, as I am sure there are many amazing works that I missed. Regardless, I still have the favorites out of what I’ve personally seen and experienced. After seeing John Gonzalez’s predictions for the top 10, I felt the need to share what I HOPE the top 10 will be. I decided to pick my top 10 out of the current top 100 on the Artprize website. Also, I only picked out of the pieces I’ve physically seen. So, in no particular order, here goes:
- Detroit Forsaken, by Ryan Spencer Reed
- Midland, by Al Wildey
- No Home Like Your Own, by Emir Alibasic
- Dream Collection, by Heather Holloman
- Cherry Log Vase, by Matthew Hutchinson
- Truck Drawing: El Paso TX to Grand Rapids MI, by Dave Ford
- Surge, by Martijn van Wagtendonk
- Form #8, by Heechan Kim
- salt & earth (garden for Patricia), by Young Kim
- Lure/Wave, Grand Rapids (Lure/Forest), by Beili Liu
Looking at the current top 25, I’m a little concerned to see what will end up being the final top 10. I am still excited about it though. I am still amazed at the number of people that make it downtown for this event. I hope that as the years progress, and people continue to take in new and different artwork each time, their artistic horizons will broaden beyond the big and flashy. Ultimately, bigger and glitzier will wear thin, and people will start to desire some more substance. I hope.
I think one of the factors contributing to the current top 25 is that the big venues get visited first. I’m guilty of that myself. The places that, for the most part, produced the top 10 last year are automatically receiving more focus this time around. Artprize could do a couple things to help with this I think. Make the voting time for the top 10 at least a week longer, require venues to pick a different batch of artists each year, and maybe require the previous years top 10 artists to sit out one year? This is only the second year for this event, and I’m sure Rick and his team will continue to tweak things to make it a great experience and succeed at getting people to appreciate and discuss art, in all its forms.