I just had the honor of announcing this to the group I admin for:
"
Hey there

We are now officially a group!

Let's explore this new experience together, shall we?

I just got the news minutes ago, and I'm still checking things out.

I'll post updates as I figure stuff out!


"


If you are reading this, and are a member of please watch for announcements regarding the group, and also please take a moment to go over to the group page and join as a member. We have to rebuild our member list since the transition, and I plan on gradually sending messages to everyone on the membership roster to remind them to join the group as a member to verify active membership.

If you're not a member, you are still welcome to swing by and visit our group and check out some beautiful Michigan-themed artwork!

There is an amazing event happening in my city called ArtPrize. I can't really tell you much about it except that over 1200 artists are competing, and that our entire downtown area is covered in artwork! It is absolutely amazing what this event has done for our city! The people are out, enjoying our city, enjoying the art.... it's beautiful!

Hubby and I have decided that for our anniversary, we were going to go downtown and explore the artwork! We had a blast, and ended up walking around for about 4 and a half hours taking photos and checking out all the entries. I'm posting some ArtPrize photos gradually for you to check out as well.

They've narrowed the entries down to the top 10 now, and the voting will end next week, and a winner should be declared by October 10. Unfortunately, my favorite pieces didn't make the top ten, but some of the other works that I liked did.

UPDATE: A painting, Open Water no. 24 by Ran Ortner [link] was the winner! I didn't get to see this piece, or, unfortunately, any of the top 3.... What a bummer!

I haven't worked through all the photos I took yet, but I'm slowly making my way through them... please be patient, and I'll continue to post them here as I finish them.

Thankfully, they are planning on having an ArtPrize again in 2010, and tweaking the way they did things a bit... the first time is always a learning experience! I look forward to next year's event!

If you'd like to know more, please check out the ArtPrize website at [link]