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COMMUNITY TIES: With ArtPrize Nine underway, people gather together for opening-day festivities in downtown Grand Rapids Thursday, Sept. 20. This year’s ArtPrize is home to more venues, and while attendance is currently lower than in previous years, it is expected to pick up once the warm weather subsides, giving attendees some relief. GVL | MATT READ
ArtPrize Nine by the numbers Venues increase while attendance goes down BY JOSHUA VISSERS JVISSERS@LANTHORN.COM
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ou might notice that Grand Rapids’ ArtPrize Nine, now well underway, has had lower attendance than previous years. “I think it’s due to the weather,” said Maria Farias, a venue curator at PaLatté who also has her own entry, entitled “It’s a Dare.” She expects it will be busier this coming weekend after relief from the warm weather. John and Sheila Goodworth, who traveled from Pittsburgh, Pennsylva-
nia, this year to see ArtPrize for the fourth time, were a little bewildered by the empty streets. “Did everybody leave?” Sheila Goodworth asked, looking around for Grand Rapids citizens, jokingly. They met their friends Bill and Deb McDougall, who came from Jim Falls, Wisconsin, for their second ArtPrize experience. The quartet agreed it was too hot but refused to waste their three days in Grand Rapids inside and not out experiencing the city-wide event. “If we see half of it in the time we’re here, we’ll be lucky,” Bill McDougall
said, estimating that they had seen about 300 entries so far. That 300 is less than 23 percent of the 1,346 entries registered in this year’s event, which corresponds to the fewest participating artists since the first ArtPrize in 2009, which had 1,262 entrants. However, ArtPrize Nine has 175 venues this year, second only to 2010, which was arguably ArtPrize’s biggest year so far, during which 192 local organizations hosted artists’ displays. “Maybe the crowds are a little less, but I’ve always seen a good crowd on the bridge,” said Ryan Spencer Reed, the doc-
umentary photographer behind “Oil and Water,” which is suspended in the Grand River from the Pearl Street bridge. His entry is currently in the top 25 installation list for the public vote. This is his third year at ArtPrize, having entered before in 2011 at the DeVos Place Convention Center and in 2014 at the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM). Other than making sure his entry stays clean, he’s not intending to spend too much time on the river.
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GV staff member, professor appear in ‘60 Minutes’ episode with Oprah Winfrey BY SARAH HOLLIS NEWS@LANTHORN.COM
each chapter on specific areas they were less familiar with. The book features 17 artists who use the process of casting in their art, some of which include non-traditional materials like chocolate, salt or even the artists’ own blood. “Everyone casts,” Zettle-Sterling said.”That’s a thing that people don’t think about, but when you make cup-
Ever since the 2016 presidential election, many people have felt divided in terms of political views. In an effort to start a conversation on this issue, Oprah Winfrey, as special guest correspondent for “60 Minutes,” helped to conduct a political focus group of 14 people with varying political opinions and backgrounds. The episode aired Sunday, Sept. 24, and featured a Grand Valley State University staff member and a professor. The first was Jennifer Allard, associate director for student recruitment marketing for Institutional Marketing. The second was professor of economics Matthew Wiedenhoeft. Participants in the focus group were chosen specifically to be a diverse group. “I clicked on an ad on Facebook, and clearly, they were targeting certain people,” Allard said. “I filled out an extensive questionnaire on every person I’ve ever voted for, my family, and it was pretty exhaustive. I feel like I got selected because I am a registered Republican who has always voted Republican, and I did not vote for Trump, so I fit that niche on the panel.” The group was also evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. “I like the fact that they evened it out,” Wiedenhoeft said. “It wasn’t blatantly one way or another. I think even the spectrum within each party was good. We had one guy, the typical Trump supporter, could do no wrong, and then you’ve got other people like myself, they question him, and vice versa on the other side. I think it was very well-thought-out on how they
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BRINGING IT TO PAPER: Renee Zettle-Sterling (left) and Jen Townsend (right), authors of “Cast: Art and Objects Made Using Humanity’s Most Transformational Process.” The book features 17 artists and uses more than 800 pictures and a variety of essays to shed light on the artistic process of casting. COURTESY | GVNOW
GV professor co-authors book on the art of casting BY CELIA HARMELINK CHARMELINK@LANTHORN.COM
Renee Zettle-Sterling, professor of jewelry, metalsmithing and foundations at Grand Valley State University, co-authored the new book “Cast: Art and Objects Made Using Humanity’s Most Transformational Process.” Through the use of more than 800 pictures and a variety of essays, this book sheds light on the artistic pro-
cess of casting, which is defined as the manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold to obtain a desired shape and then is allowed to solidify. “Cast” was released Wednesday, June 28, and is available for purchase through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Gazelle Books, Target and more. It is also being sold in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Zettle-Sterling had been
working on this project for three years with her co-author, Jen Townsend, an artist from NYC, when they realized the lack of books on the subject of casting. “We wanted to write the book that we wanted to own, and so that’s how it got started,” Zettle-Sterling said. “(Casting) is in everyday life. Most of the objects you encounter in your day-to-day world are cast.” They hired essayists to begin