More than two weeks into the ArtPrize’s Connections to match artists with venues, here’s how it stands.

Battle Creek artist Nick Jakubiak, who entered “Old Tired Crow” in ArtPrize 2012 last year, was the first artist to connect with a venue for ArtPrize 2013. So far some 134 artists have found a home for the fifth exhibition and competition opening in September.Courtesy Photo 

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital is the first ArtPrize 2013 venue to fill its dance card for the fifth exhibition and competition this fall.

More than two weeks into ArtPrize’s Connections period to match artists with venues, some 134 artists had connected with one of the 186 venues signed up to be a part of the $560,000 exhibition and competition.

Spectrum Health Butterworth has five entries in photography and acrylic painting preparing to show their work in the main lobby of the hospital at 100 Michigan St. NE.

ArtPrize 2013 returns Sept. 18 for 19 days of a strolling art exhibition in downtown Grand Rapids plus Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.

Artist registration opened April 22 followed by the start of Connections on April 29.

Related: ArtPrize 2013′s dating game opens today for fifth annual contest

Artists, however, aren’t listed on ArtPrize’s website when they register, but only after they connect with a venue to show their work.

Nick Jakubiak, of Battle Creek, who showed “Old Tired Crow” at The B.O.B. last year, a piece that made it into the Top 50 in the popular vote, was the first artist to make a connection with plans to return to The B.O.B.

It’ll be his third visit to ArtPrize beginning with his sculpture “Land Trout” at Van Andel Arena in 2011.

His ArtPrize 2013 entry, “Tired Pandas,” will be a 6-foot tall sculpture made of recycled tires, the same material he used for “Old Tired Crow.”

“I look forward to being part of it every year, said Jakubiak. “I usually paint pictures but ArtPrize makes me open up and try new things. ArtPrize has brought me a real love of doing sculptures.”

Registration continues until June 6 for artists interested in competing for $360,000 in prize money, selected by popular vote among viewers, and for $200,000 that will be awarded by jurors.

Connections continues until June 20.

Venue signup, which ended April 11, was finalized with 186 offices, restaurants and public parks ready to be a part of the radically open, urban exhibition. Ultimately, each spot must match with at least one artist to remain a part of the event.

The six weeks of courtship between registering artists and already registered venues ultimately will decide the look and feel of the fifth exhibition coming this fall.

The 135 connected artists so far include more than 80 two-dimensional works and more than 40 three-dimensional works. No film or video or performance art has come aboard so far.

The B.O.B. is leading the pack with more than 30 entries ready to show at the downtown eatery at 20 Monroe Ave. NW.

The Women’s City Club, one of ArtPrize 2013’s four Showcase Venues, has 18 entries booked for the competition created by social media entrepreneur Rick DeVos.

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Here are the five jurors who each will award a $20,000 juried prize in a particular genre in ArtPrize 2013.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – ArtPrize 2013 jurors include three curators, an architect and a poet.

John Yau, Hesse McGraw, Rashida Bumbray, Franch I Gilabert, and Alice Gray each will award one $20,000 prize in the fifth annual contest.

Conceptual artist Mel Chin, curator Manon Slome and artistic director Anne Pasternak make up the three-judge panel that will determine ArtPrize 2013’s $100,000 Juried Grand Prize.

Related: ArtPrize names jurors who will award $100,000 2013 Juried Grand Prize

“We’ve invited world renowned experts whose work shares a similar sensibility,” said Kevin Buist, director of artist and cultural relations for ArtPrize.

A total of $560,000 will be awarded in October at the conclusion of the urban exhibition and competition created by social media entrepreneur Rick DeVos in an effort to reboot the conversation between artists and audiences.

The first four ArtPrizes have dealt with how the audience for contemporary art is formed and what role should that audience have in the interpretation and valuation of art as well as what role does contemporary art have in the revitalization of post-industrial cities.

“The eight individuals we’ve invited to join us this fall all approach these questions from different positions,” Buist said. “It’s our hope that they’ll lead a critical conversation around these topics in a way that deepens understanding and pushes the discourse forward.”

During the ArtPrize 2013, opening Sept. 18, 2013, viewers casting votes through social media will pick 10 favorites who will share $360,000 in cash prizes including the $200,000 First Prize awarded last year to Adonna Khare for her large-scale drawing, “Elephants.”

Related: ArtPrize 2012 winner of $200,000 is ‘Elephants’ by Adonna Khare

The eight jurors will award another $200,000 in cash prizes including the $100,000 Juried Grand Prize determined by a panel of three judges and five $20,000 category prizes in separate genres chosen by five different judges.

ArtPrize’s $100,000 Juried Grand Prize, which made its debut last year, was won by Design 99 for its installation, “Displacement (13208 Kilinger Street)”

Related: ArtPrize 2012: How objects from abandoned Detroit home won $100,000

Same as last year, the five jurors of the category awards will participate in the ArtPrize Shortlist Event to present and discuss their list of five nominees for the award in their category.

The public event will be televised live on WOOD TV8 the NBC-TV affiliate in Grand Rapids.

Here are the five category judges who will be part of ArtPrize 2013.

• John Yau, a poet and critic based in New York, will award the 2D prize. He has published over 50 books of artists’ books, fiction, poetry, and art criticism. He is the Editor of Hyperallergic Weekend, and former Arts editor of The Brooklyn Rail. He teaches art criticism at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. His most recent book is Further Adventures in Monochrome, a collection of poems.

• Hesse McGraw, a curator, writer and artist, will determine the 3D prize. McGraw works as curator at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the founding director and curator of Paragraph, a contemporary art gallery operating under the non-profit Urban Culture Project in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. He is the former assistant director of Max Protetch gallery in New York, City and former senior editor of Review, a Kansas City-based visual culture magazine.

• Rashida Bumbray, an independent curator living and working in New York City, will award the Time-Based prize. She recently served as Associate Curator at The Kitchen from 2006 to 2012. She began her career as Curatorial Assistant and Exhibition Coordinator at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001, where she co-founded the museum’s ongoing lobby sound installation StudioSound and Hoofers’ House, a monthly jam session for tap dancers—now called him Sham.

• Eva Franch I Gilabert, the director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, will give the prize for Best Use of Urban Space. Franch I Gilabert is a Catalan architect, researcher, teacher and founder of the solo practice OOAA (office of architectural affairs). Prior to joining SFAA in 2010, Franch directed the Master’s Thesis studio at Rice University. She has lectured nationally and internationally on art, architecture and design and the importance of alternative practices in the construction and understanding of public life.

• Alice Gray Stites, an independent curator, will decide the prize for Best Venue. She’s Chief Curator and Director of Art Programming for 21cMuseum, a unique hotel and contemporary art museum with locations in Louisville, Cincinnati, and Bentonville.

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Contest extends the artistry found inside the pint glass to what goes underneath it.

Taps in a row at Perrin Brewing in Comstock Park. MLive.com file photo 

GRAND RAPIDS,MI – Fresh off of the city’s second crowning as “Beer City USA” comes a contest that celebrates not only the artistry inside the pint glass but what goes underneath it.

Perrin Brewing Company and SpringHill Suites North are hosting a Beer City Coaster Contest.

Created to celebrate Grand Rapids as a beer-lovers tourist destination, the winning artwork will have their design printed on coasters to be served with drinks at Perrin Brewing Company during ArtPrize in September and October.

Entries will be accepted May 24-July 26. Finalists will be announced on July 29 and the winner will be determined by a public vote. The contest is open to anyone age 21 and older.

More information and entry forms can be picked up in person at Perrin Brewing Company, 5910 Comstock Park Drive or on the contest Facebook page.

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Artistic director Anne Pasternak was tapped in February for the three-person panel. A conceptual artist and curator join her.

Anne Pasternak, artistic director of the public arts organization Creative Time, was the first of the three jurors tapped for ArtPrize 2013′s $100,000 Juried Grand Prize. (Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)Timothy Greenfield-Sanders 

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Conceptual artist Mel Chin and curator Manon Slome will join artistic director Anne Pasternak to pick ArtPrize 2013’s $100,000 Juried Grand Prize.

The three-panel juror will award ArtPrize’s second largest cash prize in October at the conclusion of the fifth annual urban exhibition and $560,000 competition.

The three jurors, each with a background in urban art, will participate in ArtPrize’s first jurored panel discussion. Titled “Can Art Save Cities?” the evening will feature each of the jurors presenting insights from their practice as artists, curators, administrators and activists.

A moderated conversation will investigate the notion that struggling cities can be revived by injecting contemporary art into the environment.

“Nothing is ever so simple, of course,” said Kevin Buist, ArtPrize director of artist/cultural relations. “This event will grapple with the fact that ArtPrize is an example of such an initiative as well as a platform upon which art and urbanism can be dissected and discussed.”

ArtPrize, created in 2009 by social media entrepreneur Rick DeVos, opens Sept. 18 and continues through Oct. 6, 2013 in downtown Grand Rapids.

Anne Pasternak, president and artistic director of Creative Time, the public arts organization that commissioned “Tribute in Light,” six months after 9/11, in February was named as the first of the three jurors who will decide the ArtPrize Juried Grand Prize, sponsored by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University.

Related: Artistic director of Creative Time, which commissioned ‘Tribute in Light’ in memory of 9/11, will be on ArtPrize 2013 jury.

Mel Chin, an American-born artist of Chinese parents, whose work has been seen in the Hirshhorn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles among other places, was featured on the PBS-TV series “Art21,” which featured pieces including S.P.A.W.N, a project involving reclamined abandoned buildings in Detroit.

Manon Slome, president and chief curator of No Longer Empty, a nonprofit organization that stages exhibition in unused urban spaces, formerly was chief curator of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City from 2002 to 2008. Before that she worked as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum for seven years.

Pasternak has led Creative Time in the production of such projects as “Playing the Building,” which transformed New York City’s Battery Maritime Building into an interactive musical instrument; and “Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, a restaging of Samuel Beckett’s play in the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans.

ArtPrize’s $100,000 Juried Grand Prize, which made its debut last year, was won by Design 99 for its installation, “Displacement (13208 Kilinger Street)”

Related: ArtPrize 2012: How objects from abandoned Detroit home won $100,000

Here’s Mel Chin speaking at the National Art Education Association in March 2008 in New Orleans.

E-mail Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk: jkaczmarczyk@mlive.com
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Christian Gaines compares larger cities to mid-sized Grand Rapids, and finds a lot to be excited about.

Matching artists with venues for the $560,000 competition and exhibition is underway today.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The ArtPrize dating game begins again.

“Connections,” the process of matching artists and venues for the $560,000 competition, opens today.

Six weeks of courtship between registering artists and already registered venues ultimately will decide the look and feel of the fifth exhibition coming this fall.

ArtPrize 2013 returns Sept. 18 for 19 days of a strolling downtown art exhibition.

Venue signup, which ended April 11, was finalized with 186 offices, restaurants and public parks sign up to be part of the competition created by social media entrepreneur Rick DeVos.

Venues, all within a 3-square mile area of downtown Grand Rapids plus Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park outside of the city, were listed on ArtPrize’s website as soon as they were approved.

Artist registration opened last week on April 22 for artists interested in competing for $360,000 in prize money, selected by popular vote among viewers, and for $200,000 that will be awarded by jurors.

Artists, however, aren’t listed on ArtPrize’s website when they register, but only after they connect with a venue to show their work.

Once connected, though, artist’s names and projects will begin popping up on the website.

Artist registration will continue until June 6. Connections ends on June 20.

Ultimately, all venues must secure work by at least one artist, and each registered artist must find a venue in order to participate in this fall’s exhibition and competition.

ArtPrize 2012 welcomed more than 1,500 works of art by artists from 46 countries and 41 U.S. states to Grand Rapids.

Some 300,000 to 400,000 people participated in the event that awarded the $200,000 first prize to California artist Adonna Khare for her large-scale drawing “Elephants.”

Prize money totaling $560,000 will be handed out in October, including a $100,000 Juried Grand Prize, awarded for the first time last year to Design 99 for its installation, “Displacement (13208 Klinger Street).”

Ten prizes in all worth $360,000 will be chosen by the people, voting online or through social media, to pick the $200,000 ArtPrize first prize, the $75,000 second prize and the $50,000 third prize. Artists placing 4th through 10th place in the popular vote each will be awarded $5,000.

The $100,000 ArtPrize Juried Grand Prize, sponsored by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University, will be determined by a three-judge panel. Juried catagory awards include five additional $20,000 additional prizes in specific genres, each awarded by a judge.

E-mail Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk: jkaczmarczyk@mlive.com
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This was its first week open for lunch (other than during ArtPrize) so we were happy to be there. Regardless of your feelings about the DeVos family, the restaurant is worthy of a visit. ‘Open Water,’ the 2009 ArtPrize winner (pictured first in its original ArtPrize location), after spending some time in the Art Museum, was purchased by Dick & Betsy DeVos and now hangs beautifully in this restaurant. 

We enjoyed a dinner here last year and partook of the lovely wine bar and charcuterie offerings. But lunch time is different, and the menu reflects that. It’s small, creative, and emphasizes locally obtained ingredients.

 

To begin, we ordered ‘Bacon Jam with Warm Bread’ – yes, Bacon Jam along with ‘We Can Pickle That,’ which featured winter root vegetables in a pickled state. Both were so interesting and a treat for the tastebuds.

We selected our sandwiches accompanied by Potato Soup (with spicy guanciale & rosemary oil) and the soup was the standout; we wanted to take some home. The roast beef and lamb reuben sandwiches were delicious, as was the fried perch, but the perch sandwich was too large to eat as a sandwich and had to be de-constructed before consuming.

 

Added to that, we had to happily try the ‘Pork Fat Fries’ with garlic mayonnaise – recommended if you’re not too afraid of occasional tasty fat.

Service was very attentive and a little obsequious, but customers were light on this day and employees outnumbered them. A bored hostess stood nearby waiting for customers and willingly answered our questions about the restaurant.

The menu will be ever-changing and take-out is available. There is a small and some-what hidden out-door deck (far left in photo) that we will visit if summer ever arrives. So check it out, Grand Rapids.

A business development specialist and longtime film festival director from Los Angeles takes over ArtPrize.

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Christian Gaines is the new executive director of ArtPrize.Courtesy Photo 

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – An executive at IMDb.com and a past executive at Cannes Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival is the new director of ArtPrize.

Christian Gaines, formerly director of festivals at the American Film Institute and director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, was introduced Monday, April 22, as the new executive director of the urban exhibition and $560,000 competition.

A business development specialist with more than two decades of experience in staff management, fundraising, technology services and programming for major film festivals, Gaines was in Grand Rapids for ArtPrize’s Premiere event and the opening of Artist Registration on Monday.

Related: ArtPrize 2013 artist registration for $560,000 contest opens

Gaines, whose first day on the job was Monday, said the links that ArtPrize fosters between artists and audiences was a major attraction for him.

“Just like a film festival, ArtPrize is about audiences and artists and art and connections between them,” he said.

“I think it’s great that it puts artists on a pedestal to do their best work, and it encourages audiences to develop a voice and feel their voice counts and means something,” he said. “All of those things you can find in the film festival world, just like ArtPrize.

Most recently with IMDb.com, which is owned by Amazon.com, Gaines oversaw the global expansion of withoutabox.com, a submissions platform that connects filmmakers to more than 1,000 film festivals worldwide.

His personal interest in both art and technology also led Gaines to ArtPrize, which conducted a national search for a long-term executive director.

“It was exciting to learn more about an organization that’s going places and that’s very unfettered in what it can do and where it can go,” Gaines said. “It was defined by experimentation, so that really excited me.”

In his role as ArtPrize’s fourth executive director, Gaines will oversee all aspects of the annual competition, which opens Sept. 18, 2013.

Gaines also will work to move the nonprofit organization further along the path to self-sustainability, a goal ArtPrize has set its sights on reaching by the end of 2013.

“Christian’s expertise leading major, international festivals as well as working with artists and industry-leading technology services will help ArtPrize develop as a platform for creativity,” said Rick DeVos, founder of ArtPrize and chairman of the board of the nonprofit organization.

Gaines follows interim executive director Daryn Kuipers, who joined the ArtPrize team in July 2012 and supervised the fourth exhibition and competition, which drew an estimated 400,000 visitors to Grand Rapids.

“As we were interviewing people, Christian really came across as a person who’s done multiple things. His prior leadership was key with what we’re looking for,” said Kuipers, formerly financial manager at The Windquest Group, who will remain as a consultant to ArtPrize, transferring day-to-day management responsibilities to Gaines.

ArtPrize has had a revolving door of three executive directors and one interim director at its helm for its first four events. Gaines’ predecessor, Catherine Creamer, served as ArtPrize’s third executive director for just 15 months before resigning.

Gaines, 48, was born in Belgium to American parents, raised in the United Kingdom, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar College.

Gaines, his wife, Kristen, an online retail entrepreneur, and their two teenage children will move to West Michigan this summer.

Rick DeVos, chairman of the board of directors of ArtPrize, explains what the non-profit organization was looking for in its national search for an executive director for ArtPrize.

E-mail Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk: jkaczmarczyk@mlive.com
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