5 artprize mbc

Revised conceptual plans presented at ORV meeting Thursday, September 29, 2016

Hart, Shelby high schools celebrating homecoming weeks

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Late 2-point conversion the Hart beats difference in 20-19 Hart win, Shelby 1st in series since 2004 Page B1

Emmy win for Shelby’s Kirsten Kelly

Documentary on homeless youth “When they called name, there snags television’s highest honor our was this collective

By Amanda Dodge

OHJ Contributing Writer

• Contributed photo

Backstage at the Emmy’s Anne de Mare and Kirstin Kelly, third and fourth from left, celebrate with Leslie Simmer (Editor), Katie Taber (Co-Producer), Justine Nagan (Executive Producer), Andrew Schwertfeger (Executive Producer), and Elizabeth Hemmerdinger (Associate Producer).

Grant Twp. planners delay action on cell tower

Amidst a sea of entries from top-notch major networks, when award-winning journalist and news anchor, Jane Pauley, announced the winner of the Outstanding Business And Economic Reporting: Long Form, a collective gasp and much cheering could be heard.

First-time nominees and winners Kirsten Kelly and her coproducer and co-director Anne de Mare made their way to the stage, as their film about homeless youth in Chicago, “The

T he

Homestretch” took home the highest honor in television.

Upon reaching the podium, Wednesday evening, Sept. 21 at the 37th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards in New York City, Kelly, who was delegated to speak for the film, opened by saying, “Thank you.

Unexpected for sure.”

Kelly said days later that they were honored to just be nominated and the win was a total surprise. “That’s an understatement. There was a pretty big group of us for the film that was there, and it was good to have that reunion with the

team. We were really just honored to be there and not expecting it at all,” Kelly said. “We were the underdog, up against CNN. The whole evening, the room was full of incredible investigative journalists, the reports they were doing and the things they were investigating are really inspiring.”

She added that she wanted to make the experience one that she took in, enjoyed and would remember always. “You hear so much about the sensation-

gasp of shock.

I’m looking at my parents’ faces and they couldn’t believe it. It was this moment that you will never forget,”

— Kirstin Kelly Emmy winning producer and director

KELLY WINS EMMY continued on 3a

ArtPrize of Dreams

Want more information on factors leading to site location

By Greg Means

Shoreline Media Writer

ROTHBURY – Following a public hearing Tuesday evening, which at times became emotional, personal and heated, the Grant Township Planning Commission tabled a recommendation on a Verizon Wireless’ request for a special use permit to build a cell tower.

The planners are seeking more information on three issues before acting on the request which will eventually go to the township board for final action. Township planners are expected to take up the issue again at their Oct. 24 meeting which will begin at 7 p.m. The township zoning board of appeals is also expected to

PROPOSED CELL TOWER QUESTIONED continued on 6a

Andrew Skinner • Oceana’s Herald-Journal

SHELBY — More teeth were put into the Shelby Village water and wastewater billing policy by the Shelby Village Council Sept. 27.

Shelby Village Councilman John Sutton said the changes were made due to the number of delinquent payments the village deals with each month. It was hoped the changes will prompt recurrent delinquent water and sewer customers to pay their bills on time. He said the village had 52 delinquent accounts last month.

“We just wanted to make it hurt a little bit,” Sutton.

Village Clerk Julie Schultz said the changes

WATER, SEWER BILLS continued on 6a

Gowell appointed to vacant road board seat

Primary election winner Lloyd Gowell of New Era was appointed Sept. 22 to complete the Oceana County Road Commission term on the seat recently vacated by Commissioner Gary Tate.

Tate resigned the seat Sept. 14 after accepting a position as a truck driver for the road commission. He had been appointed by the county board to the vacancy last winter following the death of former road commission Chairman

GOWELL NAMED TO OCRC BOARD

PALC’s first collaborative piece embodies its spirit of mentoring generosity

By Amanda Dodge OHJ Contributing Writer

Of the over 1,400 ArtPrize 2016 entries, each has a unique story and meaning to each artist. However, for one of those pieces, the story and meaning celebrate the beauty of dreams and inspiring spirit of collaboration close to home.

The Pentwater Artisan Learning Center’s entry: “Michigan: a Great Lakes Love Affair” is currently on display and looking for votes through Oct. 9 at Tavern on the Square, 100 Ionia Ave., SW in downtown Grand Rapids.

The project began on an autumn night, last fall to be exact, when artist Regina McCaleb and her husband, Mac, went to sleep, as often done before, ready to engage in blissful, ordinary dreams. However, this was no ordinary evening, for divine inspiration struck as the two dreams intertwined into a vision of things to come.

“I dreamt that everyone at the (Pentwater Artisan Learning Center) worked on this big

piece. It was a map of Michigan with the lakes and handmade pieces of art attached to it,” McCaleb explained. “I dreamt that we won the $200,000 popular vote (for ArtPrize).”

As the words rushed from her mouth to her husband’s ears, she said he acknowledged her dream and offered her a name for the piece, which he too, had envisioned. “Michigan: a Great Lakes Love Affair.”

The romantically poetic and apropos name is coupled with the spirit of the PALC, as the art in its many forms that is created there is shaped, molded, carved, painted, sewn and designed with expert skill and a tremendous amount of love.

The PALC was started by Gene and Barb Davidson and their desire to bring all these forms of art to the people of this area and provide them with a place where they could come and mentor others and learn themselves and grow together as a community.

“The purpose in the dream is that people wonder what is go-

ing to happen when Gene is no longer able to lead us,” McCaleb said. “We want to win the money for the heart of the Artisan Center, and in my dream, Gene was the foreman of the project. So we dropped everything and ran over here.”

PALC member and social media maven for their ArtPrize endeavor, Sue Hopp, said that she had told Davidson for years that they should be in the Grand Rapids competition that draws

ARTPRIZE OF DREAMS

Vote 62561

Shelby bolster water, sewer bill policy

Pentwater Artisan Learning Center members, above, from left to right, Judy Jankowski, Ronnie Pochyla, Marty Rapp, Regina McCaleb, Jim Mize, Susan Hacker, Olivia Johnson, Sarah Southwell, Loretta Attridge, Gene Davidson, Joe Primozich, Mac McCaleb, Juanita Pierman, Peter Lundborg, Harold Sytsma, Dick Johnson, Roger Wills, Ron Christians, Margo Graettinger, Joyce Weber, Gene Jankowski, Sue Hopp, Geri Ellinger and Barb Davidson stand around their ArtPrize entry ‘Michigan: a Great Lakes Love Affair.’

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Andrew Skinner • Oceana’s Herald-Journal

Artisan center members along with family and friends chat as they take in the piece one last time before it was packed away for shipment to Grand Rapids in September for ArtPrize.

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Oceana’s Herald-Journal • September 29, 2016 • 7a

Pentwater Artisan Learning Center members involved in ‘Michigan: A Great Lakes Love Affair’ Gene Davidson: State Capitol building (wood), bridge (copper), canoe (birchbark), and sailboat (wood). Also one of the projects main “foreman;” figured out how to create project — what materials to use, how to support it, who to get to help construct it and put it together.

Regina L McCaleb: Dreamed the project with her husband, Mac, and brought the idea to Gene Davidson. She conceptualized the painting of the large piece and gathered the crews together to do it.

Sue Hopp: Has taken on the marketing aspect of the project. Is orchestrating the “Where is Eugene” T-shirt creation and sales. She also works on how to get the word out to folks about voting for the piece at ArtPrize.

Peter Lundborg: Construction of large piece, helped Gene Davidson with details, like taking him to Lansing to make sure they had the correct number of steps and windows on the State Capitol.

Karen Antrim: Created the Clydesdale Horse (clay).

Loretta Attridge: Painting crew for large piece.

Joyce Baker: Painted the Lake Erie Walleye.

Jeri Bye: Painting crew on the large piece.

Ron Christians: Construction crew of large piece.

Ted Cuchna: Created the Model T (copper).

Barb Davidson: Painting crew for the large piece.

Ruth Dufore: Created the logo of Grand Rapids (stained glass).

Ted Ehrean: Created the Brook Trout (wood), and the Steelhead (wood).

Geri Ellinger: Construction crew of large piece, and painting crew of large piece.

Margot Graettinger: Painted the apple blossom picture (oil on canvas).

Susan Hacker: Painting crew on large piece.

Gene Jankowski: Construction crew of large piece, created the S.S. Badger replica (wood) the boat for Lake Huron (wood).

Olivia Johnson: Painting crew on large piece, painted the Robin picture (oil on canvas).

Judy Jankowski: Painting crew for large piece.

Dick Johnson: Created the lighthouse (wood).

Kenneth Lipps: Construction crew on the large piece.

Jim Mize: Carved the topography, helped construct the large piece, worked on the copper bridge with Gene Davidson.

Janet Nelson: Painting crew for the large piece.

Juanita Pierman: Painting crew for large piece.

Ronnie Pochyla: Painting crew on the large piece.

Joe Primozich: Painting crew on large piece, including painting in most of the rivers, created the Lake Huron Lake trout.

Marty Rapp: Painting crew on the large piece.

Dave Raymond: Created the Lake Erie Walleye (wood).

Sarah Southwell: Painting crew on the large piece.

Harold Sytsma: Construction crew on large piece, and created the clay Whitefish for Lake Superior.

Marilyn Thorensen: Painting crew for the large piece.

Bev Weber: Painting crew on the large piece.

Joyce Weber: Painting crew on large piece, painted the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior picture (oil on canvas).

Roger Wills: Created “Eugene” the Moose (wood).

ArtPrize of Dreams people from across the globe.

“I always thought the artisan center should be in ArtPrize,” Hopp said.

However, not everyone was so eager at first. McCaleb said when she first told Davidson about her dream, his simple and honest reply was, “I’m 88.” Yet, the creative gears in his mind began cranking, as McCaleb knew they would, and once they started whirring, no one was going to be able to stop them.

McCaleb made the plans for the piece and once it was sized, it was drawn out on the floor of the PALC. Then McCaleb said that Davidson came up with the idea to use a dense blue foam board construction material that can be glued together in layers and carved to showcase Michigan’s topography.

Davidson also created a steel backing support system to hold the six pieces of the design together and the blue foam board was covered in a concrete material and was then painted.

“It was ready to be painted this past February, “ McCaleb said. “So I flew in from Florida and led the painters. It took one week to paint the lakes and the state. We started with 20 painters the first few days and towards the end we were down to only four. With so many people it added up to hundreds and hundreds of hours of work.”

In terms of the topography and painting, McCaleb noted that “it is very accurate. Jim Mize carved it and 35 of us worked on it in total.”

Accuracy has been very important for this piece, as McCaleb said that PALC President Pete LundBorg and Davidson drove to the capital to count the steps and windows for the mini-version Davidson then created. Davidson even noted something missing from the painted landscape to McCaleb.

The state is dotted with apple trees, but Davidson noticed it was lacking any asparagus fields, so McCaleb made sure they were added in to Davidson’s liking, and he ultimately approved.

Davidson has literally had his hands in every part of this project, sometimes solely in the mounting of each piece, but also, inadvertently, he had a hand in a mini disaster-turned blessing. In the early spring of this year, he decided to work on the 500-pound piece alone one day and had it propped up against a metal hood at a 10 degree angle in the back corner of the PALC. Davidson shifted his weight on the ladder, which caused an uneven weight distribution on the piece and it slid towards the floor with the Upper Peninsula slamming down at a more violent angle. He was extremely lucky to have only received minor scrapes and scratches from the incident, however, two of the art pieces that had been mounted to the U.P. did not fare as well. The Lake Superior Whitefish, expertly crafted in clay by Harold Sytsma, had a broken fin, and another piece had lost much more.

In the aftermath, Davidson stood over the collaboration’s mascot, which bears his namesake, Eugene the Moose, and saw that he was missing something rather important. The Bull Moose, which was placed near Isle Royale, was now antlerless. Roger Wills, had spent 120 hours carving Eugene and even has a Facebook following from showcasing every step of his creation, Sue Hopp said.

“He spent hours with a twopronged soldering gun just to do the hair,” she noted of Eugene’s fine details.

Hopp was the one to suggest to Wills that they name his moose since it had become

so popular. She first suggested ‘Royale’ for its location, then she suggested ‘Eugene’ and they both decided that the latter was perfect. Hopp has spearheaded a t-shirt campaign to help get the vote out for their ArtPrize entry, with the front emblazoned with “Have you seen Eugene?” and voting information on the back.

Since the accident, Wills has been keeping Eugene in a different home, his “stable in Ludington” as Wills refers to his own home. He said that after the antlers broke, Davidson apologized to him countless times. “You’re so invested in it,” Wills said. “After a week, I realized it’s just wood. The accident was actually a blessing because it is now 100 percent better than the original, as I realized the symmetry was off before.”

Wills said he had to “perform major surgery” by cutting Eugene’s head open, thinning his antlers and reattaching them with a stronger piece of wood and epoxy. He said it took him 10 hours to fix Eugene.

Eugene was one of the first pieces completed for the ArtPrize entry, after Wills brought in a smaller, eight inch moose he had previously completed and McCaleb asked if he could make another, larger one, as each of the individual pieces is 12 inches. Davidson told Wills that he had set the standard for quality for the entry.

A retired teacher, Wills said he took up carving in 2005, when one of his sophomore students became his mentor. Wills said that he has had requests from fans of Eugene to carve him a Eugenia, but he good-naturedly insists that Eugene the Moose is a confirmed bachelor, for now.

McCaleb went on to discuss several other stories of different people and how they came to help or what they learned during this collaboration. One of those was Geri Ellinger, whom McCaleb said is a mere 79 years old and wanted to help in any way possible. “She really wanted to work on the piece through the winter and kept asking Gene what she could do, as she wanted to help so badly,” McCaleb said. “When I asked Gene if he needed help putting the piece together, he said ‘no, Geri is helping me with that.’ He sets the individual art pieces on top and she bolts them to the frame underneath. Gene and Geri can bolt the entire thing together quite quickly.”

Another vignette involved McCaleb describing how former Pentwater High School biology teacher, Joe Primozich, who loves to work with wood, was asked to create one of the several fish, the Lake Huron Lake Trout, on the piece.

He had already exclusively painted all of the rivers on and

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when asked to carve the fish he responded by saying he wanted Ted Ehrean to guide him in this endeavor. Ehrean carved the two other fish on the piece and all of the completed fish pieces look as if one literally plucked them from the water and mounted them to the map, frozen in time. “The spirit of the artisan center is mentoring,” McCaleb added.

McCaleb said that Davidson assigned different artists different pieces for the entry, and very few were already completed and donated. One of those was the Brook Trout, which Ehrean brought in already completed to see if it would work with the project, and then he was assigned the Steelhead.

Davidson did not assign every piece to another artist, as he completed the sailboat which points at Pentwater, the Mackinaw Bridge which is made from copper, the delicate birch bark canoe and the highly accurate capitol building.

She also talked about the copper Model T made by Ted Cuchna, who cut out and soldered together every piece of it from his own design.

When it came to choosing a venue, Tavern on the Square seemed to check all the needed boxes. “It’s right behind the arena (Van Andel). We needed it to be inside, “McCaleb said.

“You can walk in and see it on the right. We will have people there with the piece all the time.

If we win the popular vote, we will put all of the money back into the artisan center.”

The collaborative piece will also return to the PALC after ArtPrize concludes and will be mounted to the front of the building, McCaleb and Hopp explained. They said Davidson had already built a copper roof for it.

McCaleb noted how special

the PALC is to her, stating that she “found this place right away when I moved here.” She added that she also started the painting room when it was found out what a high caliber artist she was, after a year of learning to throw bowls in the clay room.

“I’m 67, and this is the most generous spirited place I have found in all my life,” McCaleb said.

How to vote for ‘Michigan: a Great Lakes Love Affair’ To Register to vote at ArtPrize, you can use either of the following two methods: Method 1: Register to vote by downloading the free ArtPrize App on your smartphone, then take your phone with you when you go to ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. When you are there, click on the App and follow the prompts to register to vote.

Method 2: When you are at ArtPrize, stop in at a voting site (eg. The Ford museum, or the art museum), present your driver’s license,

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Claire Fleser

and they will help you get registered to vote.

To Vote, use one of the following three methods (you must have completed the registration process to vote: Method 1: Visit www. artprize.org. Sign in to your account, go to the “Find Art Page,” then search for the PALC entry, “Michigan: A Great Lakes Love Affair” voting number 62561 and click the vote button.

Method 2: Using your smartphone ArtPrize App, find number 62561 and click the vote button.

Method 3: Vote by text.

Add your mobile phone number to your ArtPrize account and follow the setup instructions in the confirmation text message, then simply text 62651 to 808080.

Pentwater Artisan Learning Center members suggest voting for “Michigan: A Great Lakes Love Affair” twice. The first time vote for 62561 between Sept. 21 and Oct. 1. The second time, vote for 62561 between Oct. 2 and Oct. 6.