ArtPrize Awards Go to Portrait Made of Pennies and Video of a Meal

A three-judge panel of art experts gave the other grand prize to “The Heartside Community Meal” by the artist Seitu Jones of St. Paul, Minn. The time-based installation, which involved a meal served in Grand Rapids on Sept. 23, earned Mr. Jones $200,000 as well.

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ArtPrize is an annual competition founded in 2009 by the tech entrepreneur Rick DeVos, a son of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and grandson of the Amway billionaire Richard DeVos. Any business or organization in downtown Grand Rapids can declare itself an art site and host entries for the prizes, which award a total of $500,000.

The contest has four categories — two-dimensional, three-dimensional, time-based and installation. The top vote-getters in each received $12,500 prizes, as did the pieces chosen by the jury as the best in those categories.

Those winners included “Oil + Water,” by Ryan Spencer Reed of Ludington, Mich., who won the public vote in the installation category for a 100-by-100-foot print on vinyl he laid in the Grand River depicting an image he shot at a Dakota Access Pipeline protest in 2016.

“Flint,” by the New Orleans-based artist Ti-Rock Moore, was selected by the jury as the best three-dimensional entry; the work featured a drinking fountain continuously spewing brown water under the sign “Colored,” as a commentary on racism’s role in the Flint, Mich., lead contamination crisis.

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