st. louis park art hunt 2010!

Find hidden art and win prizes! Parktacular's miniature art hunt is free to the public, and begins on June 3rd, 2010. St. Louis Park, Minnesota is home to another miniature artwork hunt by William Hessian as part of Parktacular's festivities.

www.WilliamHessian.com is where you will find visual photo clues, updates and photo of the hunt. The exact page that will show the SLP clues (posted daily) is on the official SLP art hunt page.

This is the fourth Parktacular Miniature artwork hunt by Minnesota artist William Hessian. 'Splash into the Summer' in St. Louis Park by searching the public parks for tiny brightly colored original artworks. The hunt is open to all. You search for these original artworks, and if you find one you keep it, and will also be awarded a prize at the Parktacular festival. During the hunt this page feature visual clues (photographs & more) to help you in the hunt for artwork.

The ten "Splash into Summer" fish are hand drawn, weather proofed and measure one inch by one and a half inches in size.

For more details anf updates about the official SLP art hunt SLP art hunt here...

Art hunt in St. Louis Park

"The Parktacular Art hunt is back! On June 4th, 2009 ten original artworks will be hidden in the public parks of St. Louis Park and you are invited to find them. Each winner gets to keep the art, and win a prize; awarded at the Parktacular event. To assist hunters, there will be visual clues posted daily on the artist's website,www.williamhessian.com , that will get periodically more revealing each day. The artwork is hidden in plain sight, but finding hidden art is not as easy as it might sound as the miniature 'chubby creature' paintings are only 1 inch by 1.5 inches big. Splash into summer, join in the adventure, get to the parks and find yourself some art!"

The third annual miniature art hunt in St. Louis Park is set to start on June 4th. I team up with Parktacular to hide miniature artwork for the public to find. This is my 13th miniature art hunt across the united states.

Enjoy the photos of the little art.

Tomorrow at Suicide Hill

You can see all 80 photos from the sledding art battle, click here.

For you Minnesotans, do not forget that tomorrow, Saturday January 3rd 2009 is:



The Sledding Art Battle
Billy Vs Matt 11
January 3rd, 2009
12noon-sundown
Middle of Kenwood Park (just north of lake of the isles), Minneapolis

The weather is on our side, and we hope everyone comes out to sled with us. We have chosen Suicide Hill at Kenwood Park, which is especially dangerous due to the many trees and steep slopes. The idea is simply to combine art with the winter sport of sledding. We challenge the crowd to vote on their favorite painting, and watch the losing work be frozen into a block of ice.

I have spent the last week running around getting everything ready for the battle. I am currently taking a break from duct taping my snowsuit together. It is going to be quite an event. Photos, videos, and finished work will be posted here on the bearded bunny blog, so even if you cannot make the event make sure to check back here soon, to see what you missed.

If you want to know more about the event, read the Creating Art while Sledding post.

The Sledding Battle Ice Tower

You can see all 80 photos from the sledding art battle, click here.



A few days ago i did this quick sketch to complete a press release for
Billy vs Matt 11: Sledding Art Battle. I've spent the last few days contacting the Minneapolis Park & Rec board trying to secure the best sledding hill in Minneapolis for our art battle.

The ice tower shown above, is a conceptual sketch of the ice tower we hope to build during our battle. The losing paintings will be frozen into blocks and stacked as a sculpture for all to see.

Matt Semke and myself hope to announce the location in the next few days, and the offical post for the event is Billy Vs Matt 11. If you enjoy sledding, art, or Billy Vs Matt events makes sure to mark Saturday, January 3rd 2009 off on your calendar. Come vote, sled and watch us create art.

Art Battle 11: art created while sledding

You can see all 80 photos from the sledding art battle, click here.

Creating art while sledding

and 

freezing the losing art in blocks of ice

Artists Matt Semke and William Hessian(myself) are going to create art while sledding down Kenwood Park's King hill in Minneapolis on January 3rd, 2009. The works of art will be voted on by an onlooking crowd, who is also invited to come sledding with the artists. The event is open to the public!

The losing creations in each round will be frozen into a block of ice. The next day a sculpture of frozen artworks will be stacked to memorialize the sledding ice battle in an ice tower. The ice tower will remain on display at Kenwood park until January 17th(see image below). 

In October 2008 in Minneapolis the two artists, Billy and Matt, had their tenth art battle at Steven's Square park. The battle consisted of paintings created with 10 foot poles, and the art was voted on by the onlooking crowd. The losing art was then chopped up with an axe by a random audience member.  

The eleventh Billy VS Matt art battle is designed to pay tribute to the frigid weather in Minnesota, and highlight the way the culture interacts with it. Sledding is joyful occasion for children and families in the midwest, and now is becoming the vehicle to create art for these two artists. Freezing the losing artwork (which will then be on sale afterwards) and creating a temporary scultpure is a Minnesotan way to punish the art that does not get votes from the crowd, and glorifying the art that gets the votes.

On January 3rd, Billy Vs Matt 11 Sledding Art Battle is on, we hope you plan to come sledding with us!

Billy Vs Matt 11
sledding art battle
January 3rd, 2009
12noon-sundown
Middle of Kenwood Park (just north of lake of the isles), Minneapolis

I am on TV

WCCO Chanel 4 came to interview me yesterday. We spoke about my Minneapolis Art Hunt. You can watch the video by going to WCCO's website.

The art hunt is in its winding moments. Less than half of the artwork is remaining, and the easy clues have just been uploaded. The park locations will be revealed tonight for the remaining hidden art.

WCCO literally contacted me the night before by e-mail, asking to do a story about the hunt, and less than 24 hours later, there it was on TV on the local news. I am excited to see that my miniature art hunts, of which I performed 7 this summer on a road trip across america, are growing in popularity each place I go. Starting with website and newspaper media, and now growing to local news. I hope the trend continues.

You can learn more, and even GO on the hunt today if you have time, by checking out the information and visual clues available on www.williamhessian.com

You can also browse my last few blog posts and learn a lot more about the artwork, the concept and see videos and pictures.

35 Octopus

Hidden Octopus Artwork

Created for the free Minneapolis Art Hunt. Each octopus will be assigned a prize for the finder. The hunt begins October 17th, 2008 2pm. /click the link to see which prize is matched with which Octopus, and mark you calendars and tell your friends.

The Next Big Push

Newspapers

During my American art tour this summer, my art hunts hit six state newspapers. The main flow of traffic to my website and my free miniature art hunts came from these articles, most notably in the Salt Lake Tribune and KATU Portland. My next step is to write a new article expressing my thanks to each city & news media for help in making my art hunt successful. I should be spending these moments writing this blog, to write the letters to the editors. Along with a few pictures, a recapping of the hunt, I will be trying to propose a future art hunt in their city. The goal will be to bring more people to my website to see the completed hunt pictures and movies and drum up demand for future art hunts.

The Videos

Yahoo! and Jumpcut sponsored a series of videos depicting my art tour this summer. There is only one more video left to be completed in the series (featuring salt lake city). You can watch my art tour videos on my website or in previous posts on this blog. Once the final video is edited on the Jumpcut website I will be pressing Yahoo! to feature my videos and lead people to watch and get involved with the online video editing program Jumpcut.

The Minneapolis Proposal

Then, once all of my thank yous are finished will come a proposal to the city I live in, Minneapolis, for a giant miniature artwork hunt. The proposal will hopefully be met with open arms as I plan to get Minneapolis' art scene behind my next big Art as Treasure project! The animal selected for Minneapolis' miniature art subject matter....the octopus. Why? I will reveal it in a future blog.

Please make sure to browse my blog and check out all of the new projects I am working on.

First Two Clues

The first of six miniature artwork hunts has begun! These are two of the daily visual clues for the St. Louis Park, Minnesota miniature artwork hunt. See more clues and pictures daily at my website: wwww.williamhessian.com

A new clue appears each day, until all 10 artworks have been found. You can also find out where the other 5 miniature artworks hunt are and when. See if there is an art hunt coming to town near you.

Axe Chop
Meanwhile, if you are from Minnesota, you should also come by and see me at the Red Hot Arts Festival. Matt Semke and myself will be competing in an art battle, where the loser watched his artwork get chopped up by an axe in front of the crowd. Hope to see you there!

Get a free bearded bunny when donating to my art tour


Also see how "I created Boba Fett"

Only 3 days away from my first miniature art hunt!

The first of six miniature art hunts I am performing this summer begins May 29th. St. Louis Park, Minnesota; my home town, is the first to start on the hunt for ten original artworks. Prizes and award ceremony provided by Parktacular

Check out the 60 different tiny (1 inch by 1.5 inches) SLP's Splash into Summer examples shown above, and also read more about the location of all six hunts and see visual clues on the Art as Treasure website.

The last few weeks I have been slaving over the computer writing postcards to galleries, art teacher, art centers', newspapers, ect trying to promote my art hunts in each individual city. I am also trying to figure out a good way to find small business sponsor to offer gift certificates to the winners of each artwork. It has been a hard treck to this point, and I have hours of busy work, phone calls, faxes, emails and letters to mail out before I am done with this process.

Check out the video I made pleaing for donation to help support the gas prices during my art tour.....boy did I pick a rough time to go on a cross country road trip.




Learn more at Art as treasure: Art hunt 2008

Also check out all of my 20 Jumpcut videos

Make sure to see my past video Kill Junk Mail

Westwood Hills Nature Center (picture blog)

Park Garbage Ratings: Kelsey and myself have recently begun the PGR ratings. We rate parks by how much garbage we find during our visit. We plan to visit a number of parks in the midwest. Any garbage we find: we pick up, document and recycle. Then we post a photo blog about the specific parks we visit. Today, we visited the Westwood Nature Center, in St. Louis Park, Minnesota (our hometown).

Enjoy and please see our other PGR ratings here

Park: Westwood Hills Nature Center

Description: Both Kelsey and myself had been to this nature center over ten times in our childhood through the SLP school systems filed trips. The nature center has amazing wooded trails and even some floating dock trails. The paths lead around a very clean and animal filled lake. The staff was working overtime because it was a beautiful day outside, and they were planning a childrens Halloween party for later that night. So the beginning of our visit we checked out all the nature/halloween oriented games they were setting up.

Location: St. Louis Park, Minnesota
Date: Saturday, October 20th 2007
Time at Park: one hour
Treasures found: none


Treasures Left: 1

We did not find any treasures on our hike but we did hide one. One of my bearded bunny prints can be found in the image above. We searched all the trails of the nature center to find a spot that would keep the hidden art from the dangers of nature. Also see the close up below.

A fitting spot indeed.

Garbage Per Hour (GPH): 2



The nature center was incredibly clean. It was very hard to even find the two pieces of garbage that we did find, one was hidden in a stump and the other under leaves. The Westwood Nature Center should be commended for its incredible cleanliness. We also were very impressed with the clear water in the lake.

Westwood Hills Nature Center GPH: 2 (the best so far)