Artprize: 3rd & 4th Grade Field Trip

During October, I chaperoned one of the field trips for my third and fourth grade students.  We attended Artprize!  For those of you who don't know what Artprize is, it is an event held by the city of Grand Rapids where different businesses and their properties become art venues.  Both indoor and outdoor properties are transformed as artists from all over Michigan, the United States, and globe  apply to compete in this art competition.  Artists apply in the early spring and businesses choose the art they like best.  In past years, the winning artists and artwork have been solely chosen by public vote, however, Artprize has slowly gone away from just the public vote and has added a judging section by critics/artists in the field.  To learn more about Artprize, please follow the link attached.

Our Artprize bag and pages from the program.

It had been a number of years since I had been able to view and participate in the events of Artprize.  In fact, my first and last time time now had been the very first Artprize in 2008, 6 years ago.  Art prize has been great for the community of Grand Rapids and is huge aspect pride for the community.  This year was the first year, according to my docent, that Artprize had Educational Days where schools could sign up for a special arts activity.  This years activity was set at St. Cecilia, a music center with gorgeous architecture and stage. In addition to the activity, the students and teacher's each received a drawstring Artprize backpack, a color changing ruler, mini colored pencils, an Artprize bracelet, silly bands, and an activity drawing program that coincided with the performance the students witnessed. I copied a couple of the inserts from the program. The students used the whole thing, many having wonderfully creative starts to fantastic artwork.

One student drawing on stage to the music.

The artwork being presented at St. Cecilia was a music score composed by Chris R. Hansen accompanied by the painter Debbie Bell titled Moving Toward Joy.  The music was fun to listen to and Hansen did a wonderful job including the students with questions and information about the instruments.  While the music was playing, Bell painted a picture of what she thought a visual of the music would look like.  I truly enjoyed the idea of this entry and activity.  It helped introduce Expressionism to my students and making connections with art and sounds.  However, I was saddened to see that the painting Bell produced was the same one she had been producing for the past few weeks during their performance times.   I hear the same songs all repeatedly and each time I hear them I think of something different than before.  I think that letting the music speak to you on a daily basis would have been an interesting compare and contrast for my students to witness.  This performance was definitely unique and I think it could further develop future performances where multiple mediums are used to collaborate in order to create a finished product.

Lunch and art in Grand Rapids, MI.

After we finished the Hansen and Bell performance, we broke into small groups and walked around downtown Grand Rapids to view some of the art nearby.  Our docent was very friendly and helped us find artwork but we didn't gain any additional information about the artwork or artist like you would if you had a docent tour at an art institute or museum.  I was very thankful to have our docent and I look forward to participating an future Educational Days that Artprize puts on.  The next time I take my students through Artprize, I definitely think I will preview the docent routes and gather some information about the artwork and perhaps make a photo scavenger hunt prior to our trip so that there is more structure when viewing the art.

Happy dabbling!