A Calvin College professor has received one of the first 75 grants from Creative Captial, a new artistic grantmaking organization. 
Conrad Bakker (left), a professor of art, is the sole Michigan recipient among the 75 artists receiving grants from New York City based Creative Capital. The new arts organization is supported by some 30 foundations and individual philanthropists, including the Andy Warhol Foundation. 
This year it awarded its first grants, giving $563,700 to 75 artists from 16 states after receiving 1,807 applications from 46 states. Grantees include many younger and mid-career artists as well as nationally and internationally known artists. Many of the projects are cutting-edge endeavors. 
And Bakker's successful proposal is no exception. He plans to build objects out of wood, photograph them, create a catalog featuring his objects and then mail the catalog. 
"In recent months I've become fascinated with catalogs," he says. "I get them all the time and I like to look at them. Catalogs are essentially filled with images that represent objects. And the idea is to convince us as consumers that our lives would be better if we owned those objects. I'm interested in that process -- how it happens and what it says about us." 
For Bakker this work represents the continuation of past projects. In October 1998 he set up a garage sale at his Grand Rapids home that actually was an outdoor art installation and exhibition -- set up to duplicate the typical West Michigan garage sale. He filled his driveway with over 100 "garage sale" items, including Hardy Boys books, baseballs, frisbees, a plunger, a Dutch Boy can of paint, tools, household items and more. And, of course, the omnipresent cash box and calculator. 
But all the items were imitations -- made of wood and carved and painted by Bakker to look like typical garage sale fare. 
"The concept of a garage sale fascinates me," said Bakker, an avid garage saler himself, at the time. "A garage sale is a basic consumer interaction which is also a community interaction." 
Now he will do for catalogs what he did for garage sales. For this next effort he plans to create another 40-50 objects, representing such typical and atypical catalog fare as humidifiers, remote controls, rodent repellers and nose hair trimmers. He will photograph each in his Calvin studio, using a digital camera. And then he will create a catalog featuring all of his creations. A $5,000 grant from Creative Capital will lend a helping hand to the project. 
Part of the fun is that everything in the catalog will be for sale. 
"I don't expect to sell many objects," Bakker says with a wry smile, "but that's not the main point. Part of what will be nice about the catalog is its visibility. Artists traditionally have trouble getting their work seen. A gallery show may bring in a hundred people and then it's over. This (catalog) will also be a way of putting my work out in front of more people."