Art competition will 'take over' downtown Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids - From September 22 an arts festival will take over part of Grand Rapids. Over 1,700 artists will go there to participate in the 19 day ArtPrize event which has attracted artists from 21 countries and 44 states.

The ArtPrize event will have no jury, curator or judge. Instead, the public will decide. The winner of the competition will receive $250,000 and each of the top ten artists, as voted for by the public, will win a cash prize. $449,000 will be awarded in total. The competition invites people to vote for the artists by mobile devices or via the Internet. Any artist can enter the competition provided they can get themselves a space to display their work in one of the 192 venues which are taking part. As well as the prizes for the top ten there will be four juried awards which have been brought in for 2010. One of the jurors is Jeff Speck who works as a city planner and architectural designer. More details about the Artprize jury cand be found on their website. Mayor George Heartwell said: "The city has become a working gallery with art beginning to appear on our sidewalks, the sides of buildings, fences, downtown bridges and in our parks." The ArtPrize competition was first held last year and attracted over 200,000 people. Over 1,200 artists were involved and their work was shown at 159 locations. It's described on the ArtPrize website as "part art festival, part social experiment." The event will also include waking tours, shuttle stops to help people traveling between venues and guest speakers. Over 100 artists from Illinois will travel to Grand Rapids for the event which has attracted a large number of artists from the Midwest. ArtPrize founder Rick DeVos said: "ArtPrize is designed for both artists and the public." "For artists, both known and unknown, the purpose is to bring ideas into the world. For everyone else, ArtPrize is about making it whatever they want it to be - to go look, interact, talk about, vote on and take the event into their own hands."