Nicole Caruth is a freelance writer and curator living in New York and frequent contributor to the Art21 blog. She’ll walk around ArtPrize, observe, listen and write about her experience here. Nicole’s thoughts and opinions are her own and in no way represent an endorsement or objection from ArtPrize toward an individual artist or venue.

Aaron Heideman is a regular commenter on this blog. His remarks are thoughtful, but he’s clearly disgruntled. I’ve been tempted to reply: Dude, why are you so angry? But instead, I went to see the artist and his project, The Man in a Van, yesterday afternoon.

Homeless man. Dodge van. Tyvek banner. Felt-tip markers. These are Heideman’s creative instruments. Since July, the artist has traveled the United States in a van, collecting stories from people affected by the recession on a paper scroll (and on the van itself). This document of our present moment — measuring almost the entire width of the standard NFL football field — is heavy with tales of loss and despair.

When I arrived at the Grand Rapids Community Foundation it appeared there was nothing to see — Heideman’s scroll was torn into three parts by yesterday’s high winds. I soon learned that the artist and his damaged piece were inside the building; we sat down amid the large fragments of paper for a brief chat. I expected to get an earful about all of the problems Heideman has with ArtPrize and its voters (and there would have been nothing wrong with that). Rather, I found him to be cool and composed and unusually connected to his project — he seems to carry the weight of it on his shoulders.

“Art has messages and cultural value that exceed having a good time,” he said. We agreed that the festival and, to some extent, the circus aspect of ArtPrize encourages pure fun. Heideman shared with me that locals have verbally acknowledged the importance of his message and recognize that it’s not reflected in votes, while others have said that it’s too depressing and walked away. The thousands of stories collected before ArtPrize, including tales from local cities such as Ann Abor, Lansing, and Saginaw are written in black. Grand Rapids stories (there are 300-400 of them to date) are written in red. I asked Heideman if there was anything about the immediate audience that stood out to him. Much to my disappointment, he told me that people had been “the least respectful” in Grand Rapids, sometimes writing racist comments and, in one instance, a swastika. He said, “It creates dialogue, but it’s unfortunate.”

In response to the polls Heideman said, “The public is a lot smarter than what’s being displayed at ArtPrize [this year].” He believes that audiences will become more intelligent and critical over time. The artist has already come up with a few possible ways to solve what he finds problematic about the voting system. (You can read some of his thoughts in the comments area.) One of his suggestions is to open up voting to anyone, making ArtPrize a truly international competition. Others have proposed this on the blog, and as I told Heideman, I take issue with this idea. I’ll have to digress for a moment to explain: I recently went to see an exhibition in New York of work by a major contemporary artist whose work I have admired for years. I had never had the opportunity to see the work in person, though I had studied images online or via high-resolution reproductions. Upon seeing the real thing, I was unmoved, maybe even bored. It felt like I had seen it all before. Virtual reality seemed to have robbed me of the experience of art. And so, the fact that ArtPrize requires one to come to Grand Rapids and see artwork to vote is, to me, of enormous value. For everything that art has gained with the advent of the Web and social media, I think we are at the same time losing sight of the importance of seeing, touching, breathing, and feeling art on a real one-to-one.

The Man in a VanProject is undeniably meaningful, especially right here and now. Not long after I arrived in Grand Rapids, I passed by a downtown realty office with lease ads for spaces once occupied by retail superpowers like JC Penney. Later in the week a resident told me that her friends have left this city, because they couldn’t find jobs. Though these signs of the recession are not unique to Grand Rapids, I understand that Michigan has been hit particularly hard. I imagine that ArtPrize has not only done a lot for art in this town, but also given the local economy a welcomed boost.

(I purposely ignored community projects like Heideman’s in my last post about collectives, because I wanted to give this topic more space.The Man with a VanProject is one more point of entry into a much larger conversation.)

I’ve playfully referred to Heideman as the “squeaky wheel” in my title. However, I didn’t seek out his project just because of his visibility on this blog. I went to see The Man in a Van Project because locals told me that I should; I was compelled by the emotional impact they described. It follows that I’m listening to and reading all of your comments. To some I have already responded, others I am still mulling over and hope to address in a later post. Keep talking to me (and to each other).