ArtRide Project Awarded CAPP Golden Paintbrush

click to learn more about ArtRide

CAPP presents the Golden Paintbrush Awards annually to citizens, business and organizations that have encouraged art in public places in Ann Arbor. The awards are certificates that sport a Golden Paintbrush Award medal. Nominations for the awards are accepted all year and may be sent to CAPP c/o Parks and Recreation Department at City Hall.

This year, the Golden Paintbrush Awards will recognize the ArtRide Project, a collaborative effort of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA), the Arts Alliance of the Ann Arbor Area (a division of the Chamber of Commerce), and Arts at Michigan, a co-curricular department of the University of Michigan dedicated to undergraduate participation in the arts. Award recipients include Greg Cook, Executive Director of AATA, Tamara Real, Director of the Arts Alliance, and Lisa Herbert, Director of Arts at Michigan.

A generous grant from Pfizer Corporation enabled this project to be presented to the public. In recognition of Pfizer's continuing support of public art in Ann Arbor, CAPP will be presenting Pfizer with a special certificate.

ArtRide consisted of a series of five exhibitions of U-M student artwork onboard AATA buses running from February 2004 to September 2004. Each on-board bus exhibition featured work by four student-artists selected through a jury process and ran for six weeks. Artwork was also displayed at the Blake Transit Center and on AATA's website. In total, 85 students submitted 100 pieces of artwork. Twenty pieces were selected by the jury and were featured on bus cards in all 88 AATA buses over the course of seven months.

The goals of the project were to build a wider community audience for the arts and to strengthen and build meaningful interactions between U of M students and the Ann Arbor community. AATA received positive feedback from the community including this e-mail from a student rider:

"I have really enjoyed these additions to the buses. The quality of work is amazing and the display offers a pleasing change from the ads otherwise found above passengers' heads. I am actually beginning to recognize or remember who it is that has done certain pieces, which has made me think about the effect of art and the impression that it has in a public space like this...I found some of the best pieces to come from students from other programs than the art school, which has made me think more about how diverse the community in Ann Arbor really is..."

Past recipients of the Golden Paintbrush include Joe O'Neal, the South University Area Association and the University of Michigan's Lloyd Hall Scholars' Program, Melinda and Thomas Monahan, the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, Gerome Kamrowsky, Big City, Small World Cafe, Barbara Petry, Underpass 7, Peter Allen, Woody Miller, Utilities Department of the City of Ann Arbor, and the stARTwork Project/Ann Arbor Art Center.