Homeschool Art Appreciation

We are very lucky to live in the Grand Rapids area.  Every Sept. there is a huge art competition called Art Prize.  Artists from around the world enter and their art is displayed all over the city.  Thousands of entries!  It is so fun to go downtown and stroll the venues.  The kids get exposed to lots of art for the price of parking and the synthetic rubber on the bottom of their shoes.  (Oh, and the obligatory ice cream treat after spending the day walking all over.)  There are art pieces we marvel at, art pieces we "don't get" and of course the few "why do they think it is art?" pieces.  But the large expanse of creativity is amazing.  We do enjoy being "city people" for the day.

Ocean sculpture made from driftwood.  This sculpture rotated and everywhere you looked there were sea creatures carved into the wood.  We caught the whale on film.

 Gotta love a large toy truck!

"A Conversation With Myself"

This was one of those "I don't get it" pieces.

Tree fish

Iron horse sculpture

Collage

Bowling pin penguins

This sculpture is not bronze but wooden.

Field of flowers made from recycled plastic water bottles.

Carving/sculpture from limestone

Chainsaw wooden bears put all over the fountain at the Gerald Ford Museum.

Electric lightning interactive picture.  It changes colors!

Paper art

Who doesn't love a giant mousetrap?  We didn't test it out though.

You might be a redneck if.... you love fry pan art.  (I do!)

A huge children's sack lunch made entirely out of juice boxes.

I think this was my favorite.  It is a picture of the skyline of downtown Grand Rapids but it is made out of....

 thousands of post it notes!  I wanted to run my hand over it very badly.