ArtPrize 2013's $200,000 "Public Vote" Grand Prize Sees Victory as Boost for Quilt-Making as Artform

GRAND RAPIDS PRESS
By Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk

MICHIGAN---ArtPrize 2013's $200,000 First Prize winner Ann Loveless thinks her victory in the fifth annual competition is going to be a game changer for her genre. "Sleeping Bear Dune Lakeshore," depicting a scene of Lake Michigan, had visitors at ArtPrize convinced it was something else. "They think it's a photograph or an oil painting. I'd tell them, no," Loveless said. "They'd say, 'No way." "When you get closer, you realize it's made out of fabric," she said. The four-paneled quilt, 5 feet tall, 20 feet long, is the first textile to win the world's largest art prize. "Textiles aren't considered fine arts. They think of the quilt on the bed. But definitely this is art," she said. "I think next year, we'll have a lot of textile entries. I think I'm paving the way for quilters in general." [link]