The Valley is about to get quite a bit more interesting now that the winners of Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art's Good 'N Plenty award have been announced. Ticket holding guests who attended the Friday, August 29, event and judged the live presentations of all six finalists cast their votes and chose Peter Bugg and Mimi Jardine as the winners.
Each selected project fulfills the Good 'N Plenty award's goal of creatively bettering the winner's community while also raising the community's awareness of a specific issue. This year, those issues are Boy Scout of America's policies against gay people and littering plastic waste.
See also: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Announces 2014 Good 'N Plenty Award Finalists
Each winner will receive a $1000 award to help accomplish their proposed projects. The prizes come from cash raised from ticket sales for the live event and SMoCA's Arm Wrestling for Art event, as well as funding from a matching Spark Grant Initiative from Scottsdale Public Art.
Peter Bugg's winning project, Equal Scouts, encourages Eagle Scouts who support gay rights and disagree with the Boy Scout of America's policy of forbidding homosexual leaders to trade in their American Flag pin in for Human Rights Campaign ribbon pin, which shows a blue ribbon with yellow equal signs bars across the middle.
Scouts will also be asked to answer a questionnaire about their disagreement with the BSA's policy and be photographed with their new pin. Those photos and responses will be posted to the Equal Scouts' future website and may eventually be turned into a book or exhibition.
Mimi Jardine's Mobile Remittance Unit project involves a little more humor. Jardine plans to build a mock mobile government office that will travel around processing and collecting various types of litter, specifically plastic waste. The Mobile Remittance Unit will engage people throughout the city, state and possible across the country with playful events that will both clean up whatever community the unit visits and raise awareness of single-use plastics.
Scottsdale Public Art's project manager Kirstin Van Cleef says the event on August 29 came down to a very close vote and even though not all of the finalists received grants, she believes the other artist who presented their projects made lucrative connections that may result in opportunities in the future.
For more information about the Good 'N Plenty Award and the winners, visit www.smoca.org.
