Dufala Brothers, Ice Cream Truck Tank, Mixed Media, 8'x6'x13' 2007
As many of you know, last year my family launched our first annual art prize. On December 1, 2008 we announced the 10 winners. Last night we announced the $25,000 Grand Prize Winner - the Dufala Brothers.
The 10
2008 West Prize Winners
There have been some nice reviews of the Prize winners recently (Roberta and Libby's art blog, again here, Philadelphia Inquirer, City Paper, Phawker) and I am looking forward to sending all of the works to be shown at NEXT in Chicago. Before we open the prize for applicants again, I thought I would share some trivia about last year's prize:
Number of artists submitted: 3,496
Number of artworks submitted: 17,997
Countries represented: 77
(Top country count: US - 2546 artists; Israel - 199; UK - 139; Argentina - 86; Canada - 62; Germany 45)
Number of unique visitors to the website from May to December: 14,182 (that averages out to almost 70 unique visitors per day)
Art breakdown (as categorized by artists):
7,109 paintings
3,463 photographs
2,603 mixed media
2,032 sculptures
1,620 drawings
756 installations
414 videos
I am humbled by the response to our first year at this. The database grew through the public launch at NEXT in Chicago last year and then through word of mouth. We contacted schools and public arts programs and let our gallery and artist contacts know what we were up to. I am thankful for the support of the art community and because of them this prize will live on. I truly feel that now more than ever is an important time to be supporting contemporary artists.
There are a number of artists (23 to be exact) who didn't make the 10 but who I am stealthily following since discovering them through this year's prize. I am encouraging last year's artists to resubmit their work this year for consideration. (It will be extremely easy to resubmit on the website when the prize opens this year.) It was nearly impossible to choose 10 winners last year. Some of the artists I am still following may end up next year's winners.
We will be launching the 2009 West Prize at NEXT this year. I have been spending the last few months getting to know as much as I can about some of the art communities in the countries with the most submissions last year so that this year I will be better informed about art outside of my comfort zone.
We will have a catalog of this year's winners available by NEXT. The catalog will include interviews between an artist already in the collection and a winner. (Didier Massard interviews Georg Parthen, Leah Tinari interviews Deborah Hamon, Warren Isensee interviews Ann Toebbe, Jonathan Schipper interviews Dufala Brothers, Tracey Snelling interviews Jonas Criscoe, Peter Garfield interviews Thomas Doyle, Sarah Bridgland interviews Rob Carter, James Hyde interviews James Johnson, Ron van Der Ende interviews Brian Cooper, Don Porcella interviews Nathan Vincent).
I was able to meet all of this year's winners (except Georg Parthen) last night in Philadelphia at the Grand Prize event. Having met them all face to face now I am even more excited about their work and our relationship moving forward. They are all Grand Prize winners in my book.
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