Sunday shaped up to be a special day. Maya Schuhknecht, Miss Michigan, greeted participants and shared her enthusiasm for art. An artist herself, she brought smiles to many who were surprised to see her greeting people passing by.
We were overjoyed to have Miss Michigan, Maya Schuhknecht, join us for a few hours.
Maya has an engaging personality and was a perfect representative of not only Miss Michigan, but for our ArtPrize project. She connected especially with young girls who noticed her tiara. She encouraged them to pick a color and paint a spot too.
Maya painted her spot on the canvas in between delighting participants.
Maya’s presence was felt by all and helped bring even more excitement to the day. We’d gotten the process of handing out paint and brushes down pretty well and the canvas was showing real progress by midday.
A wedding party at the Hyatt hotel noticed Miss Michigan and the bride got a quick photo with her.
We started to notice some areas of the canvas filling in quicker than others. This may have been due to the average height of the people and less effort to reach down or up. We did encourage tall painters to go up high! Lower spots were often done by younger artists.
We encouraged those with height to reach up for the higher spots!
The family-friendly project quickly seemed to get more attention as Sunday wore on and a steady stream of visitors added more color to the canvas.
Maya takes a photo with a family while attending Paint the Calder.
We enjoyed the day and the weekend proved to be a huge success overall. We hadn’t been consistent encouraging participants to vote, since the process was a bit challenging for some. We were quite happy to see the enthusiasm from all who painted and were engaged by a project that offered them the opportunity to contribute.
The matrix of open spaces quickly changed Sunday.