ART PRIZE 2010 - Grand Rapids, MI

ART PRIZE
September 22 to October 10, 2010
* $449,000 prize ($250,000 to 1st place)
* Top 10 entries receive a prize
* Artists can submit one entry
* Property in downtown Grand Rapids can be a venue
* Venues choose the artists they exhibit
* Anyone attending the event can vote
* WINNER IS DETERMINED BY PUBLIC VOTE

ArtPrize is part arts festival, part social experiment
- this international contest is decided solely by public vote.
The event is designed for you to take it into your own hands and make it what you want it to be.
The outcomes of ArtPrize are infinite. What will you bring to the equation?

ArtPrize is a platform for creation. The event's organizers are just a small part of the whole.
Everyone brings something unique to the table, and we're excited to see what you will bring.

Art is the focus of the competition, but the main event is community. Artists take over the city, visitors explore and new relationships form. Communities open to new ideas organically.

The community keeps growing, even after the event is over.

Darren Houser ... serious comic art!

MYTHOPOEIC

Through this body of work I am investigating what we perceive to be religious ‘truth’, how hortatory rhetoric can construct reality within other peoples minds, and a desire to break away from the orthodox ideas of religion to experience genuineness solely constructed from a language of personal relevance. There is an interesting relationship between the cartoon style characters from comics and the figures from religious stories I was taught as a child. In my mind, both are caricatures of reality and are used as symbols to represent the deep and complex issues of our human nature. The conflict and confusion of crafting a personalized idea of truth is expressed in this work with densely packed areas of appropriated information and graphic elements that do not follow a linear narrative thread. By deconstructing the original narrative of these images and segments of texts, the definition of truth initially ascribed to them is dissolved allowing for a new interpretation. While it is not my intention to create an iconoclasm per se, this body of work should be viewed as an arena to explore the subjective nature of ‘truth’.

You have to see his work in person to see the detail and craftsmanship ... wonderful, creative and unique!!!