Who let the dogs out?

Bustling streets, a popular bar scene, a variety of restaurants and art that accentuates the city. Downtown Grand Rapids is young, hip and on the rise. With such a youthful city culture, ArtPrize adds that extra pizzazz to draw people in.

According to The Art Newspaper, ArtPrize is one of the most-attended public art events in the world, attracting artists and visitors from around the world. It’s a 19 day festival of life and beauty. Art bleeds through the walls of every building downtown.

In 2016, ArtPrize hosted  1,453 entries in 171 venues, awarding over $500,000 in total cash prizes to the winning artists in each of several categories. In 2-15, over 438,ooo visitors attended the event.

Many artists hold public events at the venues displaying their work to attract attention.

Weatherly Stroh, from Birmingham, Michigan, hosted an event called “Yappy Hour” at the City Water Building where her piece, “300”, is displayed. It was a social evening for animal-lovers to drink and hang out with each other… and their dogs.

 

Stroh wanted to raise more awareness of her work because the venue is a bit outside the central downtown area. She invited her friends on the West side of the state to attend, as well as the Humane Society of West Michigan. Volunteers from the Humane Society brought adoptable dogs to the social to showcase the available animals in the area.

Stroh created “300” with small canvas boards with oil paint. The 300 individual paintings portray dogs, cats, birds, rabbits and roosters.

Stroh’s inspiration came from trips to the Humane Society of West Michigan (HSWM) and Michigan Humane Society (MHS), where she took photos of animals in the shelters to paint. Some photographs were submitted by HSWM volunteers who had adopted animals from the shelter.

“When I was taking the photographs, I would try to get them animated,” Stroh said. “But a lot of them are shy and nervous so I wanted to capture that too.”

The number three hundred was not chosen at random.

“I kind of picked a number that I thought would be manageable but also recognizing that wow, that’s a tremendous amount of animals that they have to feed and give veterinary care to, you know, passes through their doors on a daily basis,” Stroh said. “I kind of wanted to represent a snapshot of a day.”

The individual paintings were done for a reason, as well.

“There’s 7.5 million homeless animals in the United States and kind of just realizing how staggering that figure is and I wanted to I guess just help generate as much attention to that as possible,” Stroh added. “There’s so many wonderful, wonderful animals and they’re all sorts of breeds and my hope was to get people to adopt rather than buy.”

Painting animals can be quite difficult. To try to capture an animal’s personality through a photograph, let alone a painting, is challenging. But for Stroh, there’s one way to get it right.

“I typically start with the eyes because I think that’s the most important, it gives the window into their soul is what a lot of people say. I start there,” Stroh said. “It gets the rest of the painting off to a great start.”

 

The paintings were not organized in a symmetrical way. Rather, the background and types of animal were randomized.

“I wanted people’s eyes to go searching through the whole piece,” Stroh said. “I didn’t want them to lock in on one background color or one type of dog.”

For Stroh, this piece was her biggest challenge yet. Her personal style of art is more realistic, but she strives to become more loose in her work. She said the size of the project was daunting.

“This was spread out over eight months,” Stroh said. “I just kind of had to keep persisting through even days when I was like, ‘Oh my god, I don’t feel like doing this’.”

In total, “300” took over 350 hours to complete. Each individual painting took 45 minutes to an hour to finish, Stroh said.

However, all the hardwork is for a good cause. Stroh donates a portion of her proceeds throughout the year from her portraits back to the humane societies.

After completing a feat like this, Stroh can see herself coming back to ArtPrize every year.

“I love the whole energy of Grand Rapids,” Stroh said. “I haven’t really spent a lot of time here other than for Art Prize and just has a really great vibe and being surrounded by creative people and there’s all sorts of interesting talks going on that it’s really fun to be a part of it.”

She already has some animal-related ideas for next year, but Stroh would not disclose any specific details.

Not only did she paint this piece, but kept up with her normal work of landscapes and animals.

Stroh started her full-time career in art back in 2010. But the direction of animals and landscapes started when a friend asked her to paint their recently deceased dog, Georgia. She had never painted dogs but was up for the challenge.

 

“I love animals…they bring a tremendous amount of joy into my life and I think that people that connect with my paintings have similar feelings,” Stroh said.

She has her own dog, Kenai, who she adopted when she was two. She’s 12 now. During her time at ArtPrize, Kenai was staying with some friends.

“But I almost adopted a couple of the dogs that are on the wall,” Stroh said. “By the time I called, I had waited just long enough and they had been adopted, which was great.”

Towards the end of ArtPrize, a friend called Stroh notifying her she had made it to the Top 25. She also made it to the Top 5 for the Monroe North Hub.

“I think it validates that people understand my work and my message and gravitate to it,” Stroh said.