ArtPrize begins ...

HOW EXCITING - Grand Rapids Michigan is exploding with art, artists and energy!
You definitely need more than one full day to see everything at ArtPrize !!! We hit the big venues (because you have to) and got around to as many smaller ones that we could fit in (to our 1 day), we will have to get back to GR to do the neighborhoods.
Make sure you see the smaller pieces, and out of city center venues - there is a lot of great art out there at places you would not expect!
Below are some diverse talents you don't want to miss at the smaller venues!

Artist: Troy Picou
Title: Water Pony
Venue: Go Java









Artist: Brian Murer
Title: .38 Howitzer
Venue: Purple East









Artist: Patrick Richardson
Medium: Mixed media
Venue: God's Kitchen







Artist: Steven Vinson
Title: The Urban Landscape of GR
Venue: Capsule Gallery







Artist: Audrey Riley
Title: America
Venue: Heartside Park







Artist: Scott Blake
Title: Barcode Bruce Lee
Venue: Stache Gallery







Artist: Alex Schweder La
Title: Evaporative Building
Venue: UICA - Sheldon Exhibition Center









Artist: Peter Sorrell
Title: Ashwan Caban
Venue: Grand Valley Artists at Alten Place

I have to give a big WOW to this one
- the most stunning painting I have seen in a long time!!!!







another one for Grand Valley Artists at Alten Place

Artist: Sayaka Ganz
Title: Emergence
Venue: Grand Valley Artists at Alten Place





Artist: Jiyeon Yim
Title: Emotive Vessels
Venue: Calvin College Gallery









Artist: Jackson Martin
Title: The Redemptive Quality of Life II
Venue: Gillette Bridge






We were beat and needed a rest after all of this walking ... a great place toput your feet up at the end the day - DeVoss Center

Artist: Loud Art
Title: Benchmark Experience
Venue: DeVoss Center

CHICAGO Fall Season Gallery Openings 2010

It is the grand kick off for galleries all over the country ... me being in Chicago - there was a lot to see! I only got around the River North Area but I was impressed with the mix of style, medium and levels.

Starting at the David Weinberg Gallery I was very impressed with the photography by the Yale School of Art, MFA ... the works by David Bush really captured my attention. Artist's Biography David Bush started photographing as a teenager. At age 16 he built a darkroom in his parent’s basement and learned the basics out of books and the backs of Kodak boxes. He continued his education at Bard College, where he studied with Stephen Shore and earned a BA in Photography in 2001. After graduation he lived and worked as a photographer and assistant in New York City for 3 years. In 2004 he took on a position as the Technical Director for the Bard College Photography Program. David is currently a student at the Yale School of Art where he is working toward a MFA degree in 2010.


ZG Gallery had amazingly detailed and well painted (and ink / graphite) images by Justin Henry Miller. Attached: "Scout" oil on panel, 12" x 19".
Justin Henry Miller’s paintings are meticulously rendered, finely wrought realist sci-fi fantasies of a bio-medical graveyard that take place in the (maybe not so distant) future: after the experiments have concluded and the labs have been abandoned. Failed experiments are mixed with semi-successful results in the now defunct paraphernalia and discarded equipment of bio-medical waste. Fetal tissue and synthetic organs are encased forever in a state of suspended animation. Artificial respiration, insemination, and even perspiration are machine generated in self sustaining perpetuity. MORE from Chicago Artists Resource

I rarely make it over to Printworks Gallery but I am always pleasantly surprised when I do ... drawings by Audrey Niffenegger - wow!

Bio
Audrey Niffenegger was born in 1963 in the idyllic hamlet of South Haven, Michigan. Her family moved to Evanston, Illinois when she was little; she has lived in or near Chicago for most of her life.

She began making prints in 1978 under the tutelage of William Wimmer. Miss Niffenegger trained as a visual artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and received her MFA from Northwestern University’s Department of Art Theory and Practice in 1991. She has exhibited her artist’s books, prints, paintings, drawings and comics at Printworks Gallery in Chicago since 1987.

Her first books were printed and bound by hand in editions of ten. Two of these have since been commercially published by Harry N. Abrams: The Adventuress and The Three Incestuous Sisters. MORE

Last feature is a new spot in Chicago to see art ... Lee Weitzman Furniture
Some interesting photography by Yeleen Lee - a great outlook on daily life in the big city.

… What is real and unreal? Why is the banal accepted as reality? With these questions in mind, I express my own ideas and philosophy about this world’s phenomena. It is part of my character to try to find the solution to these questions in my work…

“After the rain… As in a time when I can still see the impression of the rain, As in the traces of tears in a cleared world after overwhelming distress, As in a place where the rain and the sun meet, not yet parting from each other, I, who am standing somewhere in between, listen to the stories of both sides: of this world that I see and walk on… and of the vulnerable world that, like the frame called nature, trembles in a faintest breeze…” - from the artist’s notes by Yeleen Lee
MORE

THERE IS PLENTY MORE OUT THERE TO SEE ... DON'T MISS OUT!!!

SANG SIK HONG ... different and unique contemporary sculpture

SangSik Hong’s sculptures go beyond the limit of the materials; the images of lips may be interpreted as symbols of desire. Connecting such symbolized images and meaning (power and sex) reveals clearly that his interest is focused on human desires.

“Power is strength, scarce and heading toward eternity. However, the straw, contrary to the properties of power, is a weak structure, easily available to anyone for it is produced on a large scale and a disposable material”. This juxtaposition symbolizes semantic relationships and the structure of desires, connoting the pathos of reality. MORE

“Power is strength, scarce and heading toward eternity. However, the straw, contrary to the properties of power, is a weak structure, easily available to anyone for it is produced on a large scale and a disposable material”. This juxtaposition symbolizes semantic relationships and the structure of desires, connoting the pathos of reality.