GRAND RAPIDS -- Unsatisfied with the ArtPrize top 10? No bother. Despite its name, ArtPrize is not about who wins the money, its founder said.

But a critic who heard Rick DeVos speak today at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary claims the most popular works unveiled Thursday have further embittered the art world's take on ArtPrize. And the competition will lose more credibility if one particular piece -- a 13-foot-by-9-foot stained-glass mosaic of the crucifixion of Christ -- wins the top prize, Chicago artist Richard Kooyman said.

“What is the implication (of religious art winning a prize funded by religious donors) in the real art world on the big scale?” said Kooyman, who did not enter ArtPrize. “I think it’s going to make it a laughingstock.”

DeVos spoke at the seminary as part of a conference on creativity and wisdom. Responding to questions, he conceded that changes -- like the size of the prize -- may be made as the third-year competition evolves from its initial business plan.

Calling this year “kind of a milestone” in the development of ArtPrize, he said “we’re going to look very closely at how this thing has grown and what the nature of the conversation is and how that needs to shift going forward.”

Yet, DeVos reiterated several times that ArtPrize “is really not so much about who wins the prize.” The money is just a means to spark widespread creative dialogue with a community value that “completely dwarfs what that big prize is,” he said.

“I just want to see crazy crap all over Grand Rapids, and I think we’ve achieved that,” DeVos said. “The goal is not to find better art through voting. It’s not better art through democracy.

“The prize and the voting are really just mechanisms. It comes back to building a creative culture in West Michigan.”

ArtPrize on Thursday announced the top 10 vote-getters that are left to compete for the $250,000 top prize. A winner will be named Oct. 6, with the display of all 1,582 works running through Oct. 9 at 164 downtown sites.

The top 10 incited rebukes from observers who called many of the most popular works “excruciatingly bad art” and questioned the future potential of “ArtsandCraftsPrize” to recruit legitimate art.

“My concern is not the art world and what they think of this. It’s about the process,” DeVos said. “This is only three years old. It you assume that people in Grand Rapids had a second-grade understanding of art (in 2009), we’re maybe in fifth-grade now.”

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