MichiganRadio

Nessie Goes Into The River GRAND RAPIDS, MI (Michigan Radio) - Artists are wrapping up their installations for ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. The competition begins tomorrow.

There are more than 12 hundred artists competing in ArtPrize, but a sculpture dubbed the Nessie Project is one of the biggest you'll see.

It's 80 feet long, 18 feet high. It took a semi truck, a crane and about two dozen people to install today.

One of those people is Rich App. He stood in the river to help guide Nessie down, and he said this is a local version of the Loch Ness, not like what you've seen in those blurry pictures.

"This is a homage to Grand Rapids," he says. "The color that we have here is picked out in the architecture around here. And the steps that you see here, and the block formation that we made here is akin to that of the bridge."

ArtPrize will be decided by popular vote over the next two and a half weeks. The winner gets $250,000.

Contact Dustin Dwyer at dtdwyer@umich.edu


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