The West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology (WMCAT) is a not-for-profit education and training facility in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. WMCAT opened in 2005 with 8,477 sq. ft. (since expanded to 12,414 sq. ft.) of renovated former Jacobson's department store space earning a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification and winning an American Institute of Architects Award in 2006. It is modeled after Bill Strickland's Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild and Bidwell Training Center in Pittsburgh, PA. It is also inspired by the Cincinnati Arts and Technology Center (CATC) [1] Its first graduating class in 2009 had an 85 percent high-school graduation rate among its students, 9 percent higher than the composite average of the four participating local schools. [2]
WMCAT annually recognizes local organizational examples of innovation, imagination and inspiration with its Wow! awards. [3]
On the outside east wall of the WMCAT building is a large mosaic mural created by professional artist Tracy Van Duinen with help from a team of WMCAT teen apprentices. The piece won 2nd Place in the 2011 ArtPrize public art competition for which Van Duinen was awarded $100,000 in prize money. [4]
Holland is a city in the western region of the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan on Lake Macatawa, which is fed by the Macatawa River.
Grand Valley State University is a public university in Allendale, Michigan. It was established in 1960 as Grand Valley State College. Its main campus is situated on 1,322 acres (5.35 km2) approximately 12 miles (19 km) west of Grand Rapids. The university also features campuses in Grand Rapids and Holland and regional centers in Battle Creek, Detroit, Muskegon, and Traverse City.
Calvin University, formerly Calvin College, is a private Christian university in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Founded in 1876, Calvin University is an educational institution of the Christian Reformed Church and stands in the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition. Known as Calvin College for most of its history, the school is named after John Calvin, the 16th-century Protestant Reformer.
Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) is a public community college in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Davenport University is a private university with campuses throughout Michigan and online. It was founded in 1866 by Conrad Swensburg and currently offers associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees; diplomas; and post-grad certification programs in business, technology, health professions, and graduate studies (MBA).
Richard Marvin DeVos Jr. is an American businessman and author. The son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, he served as CEO of the multi-level marketing company from 1993 to 2002. In 2006, DeVos ran for Governor of Michigan, but lost to the then-incumbent Democrat Jennifer Granholm. In 2012, Forbes magazine listed his father as the No. 351 richest person in the world, with a net worth of approximately US$5.4 billion. DeVos is the husband of Betsy DeVos, the former United States Secretary of Education in the Trump administration.
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a 158-acre (64 ha) botanical garden, art museum, and outdoor sculpture park located in Grand Rapids Township, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1995, Meijer Gardens quickly established itself in the Midwest as a major cultural attraction jointly focused on horticulture and sculpture.
David Robert Mullen is an American artist and photographer. His art spans a wide range of styles from realist, to abstraction, to surrealist. David Mullen has practiced fine art photography for over 35 years. He views photography as a great printmaking art and has worked in black and white processes such as Van Dyke brown, platinum, silver gelatin and digital formats. For the last seventeen years, Mullen has dedicated his time to black and white and color photography as well as painting in water media such as watercolor, gouache, and acrylics. Mullen has won numerous awards for his work.
The Grand Rapids Symphony is a professional orchestra located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1930, the Symphony is celebrating its 90th anniversary season in 2019-20. In 2006, its recording Invention and Alchemy was nominated for Best Classical Crossover Album at the Grammy Awards. The Grands Rapids Symphony presents more than 400 performances throughout Michigan each year, reaching over 200,000 people, and is heard in West Michigan on broadcasts by WBLU-FM (88.9) and WBLV-FM (90.3). The organization also implements 18 educational and access programs that benefit over 80,000 Michigan residents.
Grand Rapids Medical Mile is a designated area within the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. It began with medical-related development in the Hillside District of Grand Rapids, Michigan, bordering both sides of Michigan Street. More than a decade later it encompasses an area five times larger, expanding east further down Michigan St.and north across Interstate 196. It has also been referred to as Grand Rapids Medical Corridor, Michigan Street Medical Corridor, Health Hill, Medical Hill, and Pill Hill, among other names.
Sam Stryke is the artist name of Sam Struyk. Stryke is an American composer and contemporary pianist whose self-produced first album, In the Wind led him to be signed by Atlantic Records in 1991. Stryke has independently released the instrumental album Emerging in 2002 and his popular CD, Christmas, which includes adaptations of classic Christmas carols, along with several original compositions in 2006. Stryke released his fourth album, a pop jazz CD entitled Brunch, in April 2010. Also in 2010 Stryke released his second Christmas CD, Joy to the World featuring piano and orchestra arrangements of traditional carols.
Ryan Spencer Reed is an American social documentary photographer. He has worked in Central and East Africa in the capacity of a photojournalist, covering the Sudanese Diaspora, since 2002. After returning from covering the War in Darfur in summer 2004, he and his work have moved around North America to universities in the form of traveling exhibitions and lectures. The Open Society Institute & Soros Foundation awarded him with the Documentary Photography Project's Distribution Grant in 2006.
ArtPrize is an art competition and festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Anyone over the age of 18 can display their art, and any space within the three-square-mile ArtPrize district can be a venue. There are typically over 160 venues such as museums, galleries, bars, restaurants, hotels, public parks, bridges, laundromats, auto body shops, and more.
Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the second most-populated city in the state after Detroit. Grand Rapids is the central city of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area, which has a population of 1,087,592 and a combined statistical area population of 1,383,918.
Terryberry is a private, U.S. based company that provides employee recognition and award programs. Founded in 1918 by H. R. Terryberry in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Terryberry's original business focus was producing High School class rings in the Midwestern United States. During the 1970s and early 1980s Terryberry's corporate recognition business began to overtake class rings as the predominant product line. In the early 2000s, Terryberry developed web-based employee recognition solutions in addition to the custom recognition awards. Terryberry continues to be headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan and now operates 30 sales offices and has about 25,500 clients in North America, plus an office in the UK.
Eric Daigh is an American artist based in Traverse City, Michigan. He gained acclaim in 2009 when he won third place for his pushpin portraits in the Inaugural ArtPrize competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His artwork displays a strong sense of play and uses a variety of unorthodox and unconventional everyday life materials including pushpins and Post-It notes.
Are Years What? is a sculpture by American artist Mark di Suvero. It is in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington, D.C., United States. The sculpture is named after poet Marianne Moore's "What Are Years". From May 22, 2013 through May 26, 2014, the sculpture resided temporarily in San Francisco, as part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Mark di Suvero exhibition at Crissy Field.
Adonna Jantina Khare is an American artist from Burbank, California mainly focused on large-scale pencil drawings. She received her Masters of Fine Art from California State University Long Beach. Her work has been collected by prestigious public and private collections throughout the world. In 2012 she won the world’s largest art competition ArtPrize, competing against over 1500 artists from all around the world.
Noahquageshik, also spelled Nawehquageezhik, Nawehquageezhig, or Nowgeschick, and better known as Chief Noonday, was a chief of the Grand River Band of Ottawa Nation Native Americans in what would become the U.S. state of Michigan.