Early this past summer, I had the chance to engage in dialog with a few members of the ArtPrize team as they prepared the banners and scaffold towers that now occupy downtown.
While we have always bantered a bit about the finer points of this festival, in the end, ArtPrize (or as I like to call it, Grand Rapids Performance Art piece) is truly an exciting experiment happening in real time.
Each year for three years now, artists from all over have plopped down their money to cover everything from registration fees to postcards advertising their creations in the hopes of getting the Fonzie-like approval of a thumbs up from the public.
Businesses also have invested in this project and for their investment, they will more than likely be rewarded with a bit more than just a thumbs up as the region looks to net upwards of 7.5 million.
In the months ahead, another study by the Lansing-based
Anderson Economic Group will be completed to validate these estimates.
I, on the other hand, have been very vocal in the past about the need to see another form of study that would help local artists like myself understand the economic impact on the ArtPrize artist.
In 2009, I was an exhibiting artist who invested more than $2,000 (not including labor) to create a public performance-based work: The Kissing Booth.
Although I did not win, I recognized early on, as an artist who had exhibited many years prior to my ArtPrize involvement, that in order to remain in the business of art (and not be classified as a hobbyist as my accountant reminds me yearly), the art needs to turn a profit at some point when you consider the costs one invests to create. As an artist who worked in the photographic arts, the costs to produce a piece are very real and not unlike those that face area businesses.
So, I found a solution through a local business that enabled me to recoup some of these costs.
In the end, I barely broke even and enjoyed a level of exposure that placed me in the most controversial list, but also gained a bit of outside press as my entry was referenced in a national arts publication.
I considered my investment in ArtPrize as an artist satisfied since my objectives were met to my satisfaction. And, I think by the end of the day, every artist who enters ArtPrize understands the risks.
As I look over the entries this year, I am willing to adjust my sails a bit about the need for a study of the economic impact for the artists in light of all the other economic studies we have seen pop up over the years tracking the impact to businesses. I hope the money made by local businesses in the year ahead will filter into the community through fantastic art purchases that will support the artists who have made this region as culturally rich as it is today because of their touch.
I surely don’t think shepherding a new study it is something that the administration of ArtPrize needs to do either since, as a newly formed 501c3, they have enough on their plate as they raise funds for the years ahead. But in year three we have to begin to ask what is next?
While on the telephone continuing the earlier “conversation” that ArtPrize produces heavily during this time of the year, I was reminded by my friend that this is a critical year for them.
Yes, we agreed that this year (and previous years), ArtPrize, with its impressive amount of submissions, is indeed really a collective giant performance art piece for the city. People race to be a part of it while discovering new pathways, entering buildings they would have only driven by in the past.
This is good for our downtown because this kind of exposure is not encouraged on a day-to-day level and has been a part of art groups (but on a smaller scale), like Free Radical Galleries. Art has had a long economic history in our region of being used to generate capitol for our area businesses and non-profits.
As the conversation rounded into hour two, we drilled deeper asking what happens if the public becomes bored? Our concern in the end was not so much whether it was bad art or not, but rather, art that had been seen before.
Let me explain.
ArtPrize could become like the Ionia County Fair. We know there will be farm animals, fried food vendors and plenty of amusement rides, but you know what you will see before you arrive.
The future of the ArtPrize event lies not on the backs of the artists, but, in this case, on the venues that curate the pieces we will see in the event.
Anyone who has followed art knows that art should present us something new -- a fresh perspective.
It should not seek to repeat the success of the previous year like following a pattern because while ArtPrize might be seen by others as well as performance art, it is being weighed annually in chapters.
If we want to get to chapter 5, then chapter 4 better whet our appetite with gripping, page-turner excitement and not just a calculated spectacle of ArtPrize’s greatest hits.
Scale is not enough to hold the attention of the public because even an unsophisticated person can become bored by repetition.
So, before we close out year three, look around and thumbs up that which you like because that is truly the goal here, but curators should look around carefully at what is not present and seek this out for the next ArtPrize. It is what will make your venue truly stand out.
Repetition is boring and conceptual art that plays to one note is a bust too. People crave deeper experiences in their lives and art has always filled that vacuum. Art that demands we go through it because it takes us to the next level on the other side.
But if we are not continually surprised by art, whether it is a painting, a music composition, a work of literature or dance, do you see yourself going to ArtPrize 5, 7 or 9 if the same art styles are being repeated?
And while I have been about town asking questions from a multi-criteria user level at ArtPrize, it is my hope my editorial this week showcases the growth that can happen within all of us when we seek out different or more challenging art, ask questions of it and our selves and discover, as a result, a different experience where thoughtful consideration intersects with appreciation.
ArtPrize is not about just attracting the new, because in the end, it just needs to avoid boring people. ArtPrize has opened us up as a community to the possibilities, but it is only a conduit from which lifelong conversations and questions can begin.
Or as Rilke said so eloquently in Letters to a Young Poet, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”
Any questions?
The Future Needs All of Us (to embrace the questions.)
Tommy Allen, Lifestyle Editor
Email:
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