Art Prize -- October 2009

Last year, Grand Rapids held its first Art Prize competition, which effectively turned the city into an art gallery of sorts. See the following site for next year's Art Prize competition: http://www.artprize.org/home. It was actually really cool and attracted thousands to the downtown area. Mike and I took the Heritage Hill tour, which is when various homeowners living in the historic district open their homes to visitors. Here's information for next year's tour: http://www.heritagehillweb.org/tours.htm. What's neat is that you can go on the tour every year, as you will see some different houses. I hadn't gone on it for several years, and Mike had never gone, so we picked this year to do it, especially since we could make a day of seeing historic houses as well as art.
After seeing various houses, we stopped at the Voigt House (http://www.grmuseum.org/voigt_house) for some German food. It was a cold and rainy day, so we were in definite need of some hot, mould wine (Glühwein).

These flowers were one of the Art Prize exhibits.

Nessie was one of the most popular exhibits. I think she's in the pond outside the John Ball Park Zoo.

If I remember correctly, this sculpture was made by melting plastic toy soldiers together.

Here's a close-up.

This one on the right was interesting because it was made entirely of cake frosting. Once you walked in this room, you could smell it, and it was a pleasant, homey smell. I don't think we saw many of the winners up close, and you can view them at the Art Prize website.