GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- The ArtPrize Nine jurors - each of them experts in art - went for a neighborhood picnic in awarding the $200,000 juried grand prize for ArtPrize Nine.

"Heartside Community Meal," an outdoor meal for 250 guests in Heartside Park on Sept. 23, was entered by Seitu Jones, a Saint Paul, Minnesota, artist who teaches urban food systems at the University of Minnesota.

"This is a project that came out of love," said Jones after the award was announced on Friday, Oct. 6.

The meal, served on a 300-foot-long table in Heartside Park, was aimed at engaging residents of the mixed-income neighborhood with each other over a table of locally produced foods.

The time-based entry was chosen by jurors Gaetane Verna, director of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto; Christopher Scoates, director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum in Detroit; and Gia Hamilton, director at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.

"Seitu's work speaks to some of the key issues in America now," Verna said. "Access to food, access to community and people being able to create a space of conversation, exchange and synergy for everyone. He speaks to what is important in the context of the 'now' in his practice, not just the ability to paint or draw."

Juror Scott Stulen, director and president of Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, nominated "Heartside Community Meal," saying he was struck by the event, where "people were sitting down and talking to people they would never talk to otherwise."

"For a day, nearly 1/2 square mile of the city will be set aside as an artful backdrop for food storytelling, our reading of poetic grace and closing, and our participation in facilitated conversation about food," Jones said in his artist statement.

Inviting residents of condos and luxury apartments to dine with homeless residents who live beneath overpasses was a challenge for both groups, Jones said.

Guests, both rich and poor, were moved by the experience, said Jones, who declared, "Of course this is art!" when asked about the artistic nature of the big meal.

"This is actually old school," said Jones, noting that meals have served to bring people together for generations, with farmers serving as some of humanity's earliest artists.

"Seitu Jones shows us how artists can have an expanded social and political role," ArtPrize Exhibitions Director Kevin Buist said.

"Jones crafted this artwork by deftly orchestrating a network of individuals and organizations to create a poetic and fleeting monument to the power of community," Buist said.

"For many, it's a new way to think about what art can be: the artwork is one big, beautiful moment made of the many small moments that happen when strangers and friends share a meal."

The Heartside Community Meal was inspired by a similar meal in 2013, when Chicago's Joyce Foundation helped Jones to develop CREATE: The Community Meal, a dinner for 2,000 people at a half-mile-long table that focused on access to healthy food.

Jones, who was the city of Minneapolis' first "Artist in Residence," has created more than 30 large-scale public artworks and completed artwork for three stations along the new Green Line LRT system connecting Saint Paul and Minneapolis, according to his biography.

In 2016, Jones was awarded a $50,000 Forecast McKnight Public Art Grant to design and build a floating sculptural installation (boat) to act as a research vessel for the Mississippi River.

Asked how he would use the $200,000 grand prize, Jones replied, "I have no idea. I probably will pay more in taxes than Donald Trump has paid in the last 10 years."