It’s entirely feasible that walking the entirety of ArtPrize’s downtown venues could cause energy depletion or require rapid refreshment. Yet stopping for a sit-down meal may not be on everyone’s agenda. In that case, Biggby Coffee Downtown – at the center of the action at Pearl and Monroe – makes for a good stopping ground. 

Biggby’s seasonal drink menu has just arrived, including flavors of fall such as pumpkin spice, gingersnap and s’mores – all latte options.  If coffee isn’t in the cards, hot apple caramel cider or four different types of hot chocolate are rightfully part of Biggby’s “Warm and Cuddly” category.

Of course, if the weather is unusually warm for September in Michigan, choose a Jones Soda from the case, or have the baristas make up an iced vanilla bean or iced teddy bear with caramel and white chocolate sauce. Quick and easy bites include muffins, cookies, bagels, yogurt parfaits and other from-the-case selections that will have hungry art-viewers back in step in no time. 

The ArtPrize you'll see

A variety of relaxing paint colors in Biggby’s interior – deep eggplant, pumpkin and avocado tones – should make for an interesting backdrop for pieces like Kyle Hilla’s Moon Contours. Moon Contours is a series of photographs that were taken under the light of a full moon with a long (three-second, to be exact) open-shutter camera exposure. During those three seconds, Hilla moved and altered the angle of the camera, so the end result mimics the effect of blind contour drawings, in which artists don’t look down at the paper while sketching a model. As a result, the shape of the object being drawn – or in this case, photographed – appears as an outline, leaving the details to the viewer’s imagination.

“While taking these, I moved the camera in a lunatic-like way, which is my way of representing the intriguing legend that a full moon can induce lunacy, making people do crazy things,” said Hilla.

The exterior of Biggby Downtown will also serve as a venue. There, Grand Valley State University student Mike Shulz of will display Urban Commentary, an interactive website in which real-time comments posted there will project on the building.

Chosen by Biggby employees based on what they liked and what fit their wall space, other artists at this venue include:

• Roosevelt Beasley – Women’s Rights for Equality: The Movement
• Nathan Kukla – W is for War: A Companion Book to the Children’s Crusade
• ElizabethKurtz – Country Life
• Karen P. Cornwell – To Be or Not
• Martha Kroll -- Peacock
• Brian Kainulainen – Bond Falls – Upper Cascades
• Jennifer K. Waldner – Salt Water Sound
• Judy Steiner – Birch Tree Reflection
• Becca Schlaff – Steelhead Super Chrome
• Danae Hoppe – MH