Last night Renae and I walked around downtown GR to look at the top ten entries in ArtPrize. ArtPrize is an international art competition sponsored mainly by the Devos family along with other philanthropists in which the public votes for the top entries and the winner. So far I’ve only read about ArtPrize in the newspaper, but I thought I needed to take advantage of an event like this.
It was the perfect night to walk downtown. I used Google pedometer to map out our trek to the 10 pieces—roughly 1.578 miles if we parked on the Fulton Street Bridge.
After a stop at the orchard to pick up Ida Red apples for sauce and an extra benefit of picking a small basket of concord grapes, we found the perfect parking spot on the bridge. We walked along the river to see the Nessie monster, the table and chairs, and the two dancing sculptures. From there we went to the B.O.B. and saw the Moose. There were lots of other exhibits there as well. The car that is the optical illusion to appear as if it’s down in the parking lot was interesting as well. From there we began walking to the Old Federal Building but stopped for supper at the Sundance Grill.
Renae ordered a western omelet with raisin toast, and I ordered a Maryland crab omelet with western toast. I had commented (probably more than once) that I liked trying a local place and not just going to a chain eatery as well as about the variety of ingredients and items on the menu. The two plates came out wrapped in a tortilla shell. We both looked at it and I said, “Well, maybe they serve their omelets in a wrap. I cut into mine, and thought that it didn’t look real eggy and the bite of meat tasted more like chicken instead of crab. Renae cut into hers and said she could find the ham and what were black beans and corn doing in her omelet. It seemed logical to me that a “western” omelet may have black beans in it. When the server came back by we asked what the plates were and she said “Chicken burritos”. She went to check on something and then came back to take the plates.
Renae and I just laughed and laughed that we actually cut into burritos when we’d ordered omelets. After the fact as we laughed, we realized that the rice should have been a clue as well as no raisin toast.
Apparently in our efforts to improve ourselves culturally with so much art, we got “wrapped” up in a menu that wasn’t typical fair and were more than willing to expand our culinary palates as well.
Then we went to the Old Federal Building where we saw three of the top ten. All three there were really interesting. I especially liked the push pin portraits and the water scene. From there it was off to the Children’s Museum to Imagine That. It was an interesting mural that probably would be better in the daylight to see the colors, and then to the last of the top 10 at the UICA. It was a balloon sculpture. That doesn’t do it justice though.
It is interesting what is called art—some made me think, ummm I could do that, some was just a Wow!!! moment, and some made me wonder how the artist got the meaning he did from his work.
I think I’m too literal of a thinker to be an artist or an art connoisseur.
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