2012/365 - Day 175

reporting on the Art Hunt

Tonight I am turning the narration over to my first-ever guest blogger.

William Hessian completed another successful Miniature Art Hunt today...his 27th or 28th.  It was Northville's 2nd Annual Miniature Art Hunt during the Arts & Acts festival.  This year was a slight departure from last year in that it was more like a scavenger hunt with 10 miniature works of art hidden in plain sight in 10 businesses in downtown Northville.

In a combination of me being under the weathe/feeling that William needed to be the face of his Art Hunt, I stepped back to work on my stuff at home while William worked the table at the Northville Art House's information booth.

I will turn the blog over to William now so he can tell you a little about these photos that he took (the first one is from yesterday's coloring session).

 At ten o'clock AM the early morning art hunters arrived at the information booth to pick up their game cards and begin the hunt. Anyone was able to pick up bright orange cards and head out to 10 participating businesses searching for hidden artwork. Inside each store the art hunter had to find one of my tiny little mustang paintings. If they found the miniature artwork, they were awarded a stamp (a custom stamp hand created for each store by Took Gallagher herself!).  In this photo I am with some of the first winners who were able to find all 10 mustang artworks and were awarded one of five prize packages!

Everyone who went on the hunt received goody bags filled with all kinds of neat things; like toys, candy, coloring sheets, coupons and mazes (winners got addition prizes like bearded bunny prints, art o mat blocks, and gift certificates). Everyone was invited to come draw on the art hunt banner and create a collaboration mural which will be put up on display after the Arts and Acts festival. You can see it taking shape.  

 Miranda (in pink) was one of the big winners of the hunt, and she also was an advocate for the art hunt by helping explain to everyone the rules of the game and also encouraging others to paint on the banner. Here she was helping a very eager little artist pick out the right color to add to the banner.

 By 5pm all 50 game cards were used, and many had to be re-used by more families as they raced around the festival finding all of the mustang. The event was a huge hit with the families, the kids loved the adventure and their gift bags and the stores who hosted a hidden artwork were excited to have so much energetic foot traffic in their stores.

Thanks, William!

Over the next few days (while William is still here) I will add more blog posts about different aspects of the Art Hunt and the participating businesses and hiding the art, etc.

 This afternoon while I was home I did a couple of projects.

Yesterday at the festival someone handed William a fabulous cardboard tube to give to me.  Unfortunately, I can't figure out who it would have been and William saw so many people over the last two days he can't recall...plus he doesn't know them.

When I discover the wonderful donor I will credit them.

I was planning on cutting a couple of these other tubes down with a small saw, but now I have one that is already a great size!  THANK YOU!

And there it is, prepped with masking tape and awaiting plaster cloth with the other tubes.

And -- ta-daaaaaaa -- I finally got all of the edges of the DIY version of Penciled In (for Art-o-mat) painted!!!  There are 100 for this edition.

Now I need to print the labels and information inserts.  I have already printed and cut out the coloring cards.

There is always something more that needs to be done!