by admin | May 14th, 2010
Daniel La Ponsie’s upcoming collection of weird short-fiction and illustrations, The Savior Machine, has been entered into Grand Rapids, Michigan’s ArtPrize competition! As you can imagine, we are jazzed about this.
ArtPrize opens Sept 22, the very same day that The Savior Machine is officially released for sale.
We already have an excellent venue lined up to host the work. But official artist / venue matching isn’t for a few weeks yet, so we’ll post the venue name and location here when that is formally put together.
ArtPrize should be interesting for us for a number of reasons. Here are the fist 7 that come to mind.
1 – This is the world’s largest art prize, and therefor …
2 – The event has a lot of visibility. People from all over the world will be in Grand Rapids.
3 – No one has entered a book as an art entry in this competition until now (as far as we’re aware of), but …
4 – In an effort to be as inclusive as possible, nothing in the competition guidelines forbids it.
5 – Daniel’s book, hopefully, will stand out as a unique entry.
6 – It will spark conversation about the art of writing, and also the art of reading; because …
7 – No one can seriously argue that the written word is not art. And yet we tend to speak of “writing” and “art” as two separate things.
Daniel has already received several comments of the “can you really enter a book into an art competition?” variety. The comment is usually delivered with a wide-eyed expression, and followed with a thoughtful “Huh!” or a “Wow!”
We hope this ArtPrize entry will spark conversation on the topic of the-book-as-art. Maybe people will talk about it. Maybe the viewers will all collectively shrug.
Regardless of the reaction, this will be an interesting ArtPrize. Not just because of Daniel’s book, The Savior Machine. But because this is an art competition that is so inclusive, for both artist and viewer. The sheer variety of artwork, and the ability to engage so much creativity on so many levels, will be fantastic.
This should be spectacular, and we are thrilled to be a part of it. Stay tuned for details.
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