There's Still Time!!!! ArtPrize 2012

ArtPrize!!!!!

If it's at all a possibility for you, drop everything and make your way to Grand Rapids, Michigan in the next few days and experience ArtPrize.

What's Artprize?

It's 1571 pieces of art, in 161 venues, covering 3 square miles.

ArtPrize was conceived as an experiment - anyone could enter, any space could be a venue and the public would vote for the winner - it turns most conventional art exhibits upside down, with no experts making the choices.

The venues range from restaurants, book stores, and beauty salons to traditional museums and galleries.

The materials used by the artists are equally to diverse, ranging from traditional paints to more unusual such as wire:

Or thread and buttons:

 There are monumental works, immense yet detailed:

And that often have a surprising element!

Some are such a perfect fit for their venue, that it's hard to imagine that they'll be gone in just a few more days.

The response has been overwhelming, people of every age, every income bracket, every social niche out and about enjoying art - it sounds cliche, but you really can feel the energy as you move about the city.

The prize money is overwhelming too, a total of $560,000 in awards!

ArtPrize ends on October 7th, so there's still time - view the art, pick your favorite and vote for winner.

Touring Michigan - Munising

Water - it's the centerpiece of the landscape in Northern Michigan and was the focus of our recent visit to Munising, located on the southern shore of Lake Superior and a gateway to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

There are seventeen waterfalls in the Munising area, one of our favorites is Laughing Whitefish Falls. The falls drop a hundred feet down a limestone slide; in the spring, the flow is much stronger than now, but it's still beautiful. It's a tough place to photograph well, the ravine is so deep that only at midday does sunlight reach the bottom.
 

There's beauty in the little details too - the color of the rock, the play or light and water.

 With a forty foot drop, Miner's Falls is the reward for a twenty minute walk through the woods.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is a place unlike any other, towering above Lake Superior are the most prominent of the park's  features, the multicolored sandstone cliffs for which the lakeshore is named. These cliffs reach to a height of 200 feet above the lake; the name "Pictured Rocks" comes from the streaks of minerals that stain and decorate the face of the wind and water sculpted cliffs. Sandstone cliffs of ochre, tan, and brown - sandwiched with layers of white, green, orange, and black - glisten against the cloud-streaked sky and clear waters of Lake Superior.

There are a few ways to see the Pictured Rocks, we choose a boat cruise this time. About 12 years ago, we hiked the length of the park - from Grand Marais to Munising, a total of 42 miles. Maybe we'll do it again some day!

The cliffs start out small:

But big on color! The colors and patterns are caused by water carrying minerals such as copper, iron and manganese through the soft sandstone.

If you're comfortable in a kayak on Lake Superior, you can get truly up close and personal!

 Arches and caves are formed by the forces of wind and water:

Many of the formations have been named, this is Indian Head:

This is Chapel Rock, topped with a magnificent pine - even more amazing when you notice the root system bridging the gap to the cliff!

Spray Falls marks the turn around point, the falls also marks the the resting place of an 1856 shipwreck;  "Superior" lies at the base of the falls in 20 feet of water.

As is common on Superior, a quick moving storm moved in on our return trip:

But it stopped just before we passed the East Chanel Light on Grand Island - we had spent the previous day on Grand Island, biking nearly 20 miles.

The Munising area is beautiful all year, but the best time to visit is quickly approaching: FALL! The colors are already starting to show just a bit - plan your visit soon.

Touring Michigan - The"Sunrise Side" or Lake Huron's Northern Shore

Even when you live in a beautiful, magical place, life gets hectic and stressful and you just need to get away. We had reached that point this past weekend and decided that a couple evenings by the campfire might just be the thing to put us back in a more relaxed frame of mind.

We decided to head southeast, to the shores of Lake Huron, the "sunrise side" of the state, which has a totally different feel than the Lake Michigan side - you won't find Starbucks or sushi here, but you will find plenty of natural beauty, history and lots of lighthouses.

Just a brief aside: Did you know that bags of marshmallows now come with the warning "Marshmallows are flammable. Please use caution when roasting this product". Are there really people out there that don't know this?

We spent a few hours canoeing the Thunder Bay River and had a great time viewing all the wildlife -so many great blue herons that we lost count, egrets, an otter, swans with cygnets, turtles and an amazing array of dragonflies.

Evening brought an incredible sunset - yes, even on the "sunrise side" thanks to the wide expanse of the river.

The next day we went on a different type of adventure - we climbed the towers of three different lighthouses!

First was the Old Presque Isle Lighthouse, one of the oldest surviving lighthouses on the Great Lakes. Built in 1840 by Jeremiah Moors of Detroit, the harbor light operated until 1871 when the keeper transferred to a new, taller, coastal lighthouse a mile to the north. The stone and brick tower measures thirty feet tall and eighteen feet in diameter and features spiral hand-hewn stone steps

The Old Presque Isle Light was found to be insufficient to shipping needs and a new light, the New Presque Isle Light was built in 1870 two miles further north. It's the tallest lighthouse tower accessible to the public on the Great Lakes, with a total of 130 steps leading to the top.

It's original third order Fresnel lens is still in place, I thought this inverted reflection of the shoreline caught in the lens was interesting:

Our final lighthouse of the day was 40 Mile Point Lighthouse, built in 1896. It was built in order to complete a chain of lights along Lake Huron's shoreline, so that ships would always be in viewing range of light.

That there was (and is) a need for lighthouses to add navigation is obvious - 200 feet from the lighthouse is a section of hull from the Joseph H Fay, which went down in the "Big Blow" of 1905 when a total of 27 wooden vessels were lost.

We had a wonderfully relaxing weekend, experienced adventures in nature and history, and went home refreshed and ready to face the fray once more - the "sunrise side" is a great place to kick back and rejuvenate!!!