Spreading the peace even more!

Latest update on the Peace Puzzle

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/557726766/the-peace-puzzle-woodcut-a-monumental-collaboratio/posts/1122303

Updates on the project are set to public so if you are following, you can always go to the project page and click the Updates tab to see what's happening!

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

Also, check this page on this very blog for a chronology of the project as things happen:
http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

Highlights

With the project funding goal surpassed, I ordered the wood!

Wood panels ready to be cut

Cutting the Fantastic Garden puzzle pieces (last project)

Beautiful cherry plywood

Tougher to get good 3/4" cherry plywood these days, I had to order two full sheets of 4 x 8 feet (122 x 244 cm) cut to the sizes of the panels, which adds about $100 to shipping. C'est la vie d'une artiste!

Which begs the question: why cherry plywood? Well...Cherry because it is beautiful, and the traditional wood of Japanese printmakers of old. The cherry is hard enough to hold a fine line and thus much detail but soft enough to carve easily. Also, because each block will have to yield about 200 prints, softer woods just will not hold up.
Plywood because anything else will warp when traveling the world and back. Las Vegas Nevada has the bragging rights for being the driest city in the USA, with single digit humidity being the norm for the majority of the year. Take a block of wood from Michigan (the mill I ordered from), cut it, mail it to Brazil (70% humidity), carve it, mail it back to Vegas and it will warp like a tiny saucer. But the layers in thick 3/4" plywood will hold the wood true. Now you know.

I set a stretch goal of 160 artists, we are at 133 right now. This means more panels for every participating artist. Six-panel artists will get 8 and 1-panel artists will get 2! Oh boy, more work for meeeee...happily.

Lastly, I had a couple of requests for a one-panel purchase reward for those NOT participating in the puzzle but wanting to support it. So there is such a reward now! Keep spreading the peace, I mean the WORD!

 



That's it for now! I'm warming up the jig-saw...

Peace Puzzle LIVES!

114 Artists so far!

Today I received the Congratulations! email from Kickstarter.com letting me know that the Peace Puzzle is funded. I was elated! Delighted! Dancing all day long!

AND there is still time to sneak in so if you have been on the fence...

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

What exactly does this mean? Reaching the funding goal means that the project has enough funds now to become a reality. I can proceed with my machiavellian scheme to lure artists into this grand adventure, ha ha ha! First order of business is to find a supplier for wood, more on this on next post.

As promised, pieces of past puzzles

For the artists that are pondering upon our theme: peace, and wondering what type of image they will be creating, here are some examples of puzzle pieces past (say that 5 times fast). The following six pieces are from the Fantastic Garden, our last puzzle. Each piece is about 5 to 6 inches or 12 to 16 centimeters in diameter.
As each block came in, I placed it in my "real" garden in an appropriate setting to record each delicious image. The published book Growing the Fantastic Garden 2012, contained each artist's image with a written blurb they send in as they return the blocks. The last book was in color!

Diane Cutter, among the purple sage

Randy Feil, between two pines

Sharron Huffman, floating on the pool (Photoshop!)

Susan McLeod, among the cut firewood

Achim Nicklis, in the pommegranate tree

Renata Salgado, perched atop a Palo Verde tree

I'm off to research wood suppliers! We need a lot of wood...


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How big is this Peace Puzzle we are making?

Oh it's big...but first!

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

The sketch has evolved again. I decided on more branch, less dove, more sky...so I adjusted the layers in Photoshop and came up with the next stage of the Peace Puzzle sketch. In the process of transferring the sketch to the wood panels, the lines will be even simpler, especially in the leaves of the branch and the dove.

Bit more branch, less dove, looking all peaceful and loving...

Scale

The scale of the puzzle prints is a bit tough to "wrap our heads around" unless you have seen one in real life.  So for those who are asking, just how big is this thing? How big will my block be? Here are some factoids for perspective.

We are planning a six panel print, each panel is a (Western) standard size paper 22 x 30 inches or 56 x 76 centimeters. I chose that size because it fits neatly in the press, the wood blocks are affordable and fairly easy to handle, and paper is cheaper bulk in standard sizes. This time the panels will be landscape orientation, two up, three wide.

Each woodblock, corresponding to each panel, can "carry" about 20-24 puzzle pieces; each piece of the puzzle is irregular size about 5 to 6 inches or 12 ot 16 centimeters in diameter. Each participant artist gets a strangely shaped wood peace with an arrow pointing to the top of the image drawn on the back.

With the image of the peace puzzle about sketched out, here are some pictures to help the visualizing.

Each shaded gray area is a puzzle piece
The entire image gets divided into over 100 puzzle pieces!

The toughest part is visualizing the entire image to scale. I am all of 5 foot 2 inches or approximately 157 centimeters tall on a proud day. I wish I were a bit taller but by now I'm quite used to being a "compact model." Here is what the whole print will look like more or less with the aforementioned compact model to scale.

Your fearless leader with the Peace Puzzle sketch in the background, to scale

That's about the size of it. Next blog post I will post some participant samples from previous projects!

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Puzzle Update!

Latest Update on Peace Puzzle

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

Quick update on the project.
Looks like groups are now coming in. We have 64% of the funds with 58 backers, and 70 artists participating!

Pervious puzzle project books
Panels, artists, process and more!

If you happen to be the envy of your peers and they wish they would have signed up, consider luring them into a cozy group! Everyone saves money, everyone gets the whole set of prints and the book and your energetic project director saves a little time when mailing.

Here are instructions on how to change from a single artist to two-artists or four-artists. Four artists get to play for only $56 each!

-Go to the project page:
http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

-Sign in if you are not already

-Click on the button Manage My Pledge (top of page)

-Choose the 2-artist or 4-artist level

-Check out as before!

Keep spreading the word, we are now two weeks in and well over half-way to the funding goal. Tell your non-artist friends too, so they get a nice book or poster of the project.
Let's give it a push this week and get over the top!

Excited??? I am!!!

Oh, and keep an eye on the blog, the sketch has evolved again and I will post something later today.

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com

Peace,
Maria

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Sketching right along...

Another day, another doodle

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

I spent long days and nights thinking about our theme and came up with a few elements that I thougth essential to peace. I firmly believe peace is within us all and yet with so much chaos going on in the world, sometimes through the pains in life, peace is tough to bring out...takes a conscious effort, a collective effort...hey! much like our puzzle print!

The main dictum about these sketches is that they have to be on the graphic side of drawing, which is difficult for me because most of the time I enjoy drawing detail and realism. To achieve the simplicity, I picture myself wielding a 12 foot brush full of ink over my driveway and only have one chance to get it right! Funny how that works for me.

Building the sketch

This is more or less how the idea emerged, step by step. First I resized the drawing to be proportional to 90 wide by 44 high inches (228 x 112 cm), which is more or less what I'm hoping the size of the beast will be if we do a six-panel print.
Then, layer by layer, thought by thought, I drew and erased until I grew tired of sitting and it was time for a loooong walk!

I feel we need a light to see, to show us where and how to find our peace. So I picked the sun, easy to do here in the desert, to shine on our lives.

light

Second we need an anchor, something or somewhere or someone where we can always take refuge. For this I picked nature, in the form of mother earth, in the form of love, where I always go when the mind is wild or the heart is hurt so I can recover my smile. Any time I depict nature, my mountains become loving figures and my trees often caress with their limbs.

earthlove

I chose to have a more or less universal symbol of peace (or two) in the dove and branch. Doves, birds, flying free, a symbol of freedom from the chains of anger and hatred. The branch, also nature, given in a gesture of togetherness, of wishing happiness and peace for others, of extending a limb of friendship.

nature

freedom

A symbol of unification and impermanence, the river signifies how everything in life comes and goes, we never step into the same river twice. Water, healing in moving, washing everything clean and new every minute of every day. We are water, our blood from suffering, sweat of toiling, and tears of sorrow and of joy are all water. Water unites us, intertwines our lives.

riverlife

That's what there is so far! I may change a few things yet! It's looking pretty peaceful...

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

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City of the World 2012

City of the World 2012

City of the World blocks 112 artists

Then there was the greatest City ever! Notice, if you’re following the dates, it took me four years to recover from the last mammoth printing session! When I began mulling the design for the next puzzle print, I planned it as a four-panel print. I also wanted to open the participation to artists outside of our comfortable happy group, if a bit nervously at first. I mean, what would happen if I sent tiny puzzle pieces all over the world and they never returned? Although previous puzzles had (almost) financed themselves with participant contributions, dealing with the unknown seemed like a risk.

One fine day I just dismissed all doubt and decided to plunge forward. My call for action was answered by an astounding 112 printmakers, causing me to question my sanity and, more practically, expand the panel set to five. With an odd number of panels, the only design possibility was a long horizontal design. Doing the math, this meant printing around 112x5 or 560 prints! For this, I would need help and so my printmaking co-conspirators in the Northwest USA stepped up to help and offered a location and strong arms to crank the press. 

My call for help was answered in Oregon!

That's what a lot of prints look like

The resulting print party, I hope one of many, was grueling but incredibly fun and in about three days’ time we produced 600 gorgeous prints to send back to participating artists. Details, photos and videos of the great Northwest Print Party can be found in my YouTube channel.

The City of the World can be seen here: 

http://1000woodcuts.com/projects/cityoftheworld/index.html

Year: 2011-2012

Title: City of the World

Artists: 112

Print Type: Collaborative Woodcut Puzzle Print

Paper: Stonehenge Natural

Dimensions: Five (5) panels, each 30 x 22 inches or 76 x 56 centimeters

Image Dimensions: Bleed to size of paper

Block: Cherry plywood, five (5) panels approximately same size as paper

Ink: Daniel Smith Traditional Black #79 Oil Based

Beginning with the City of the World, I also decided that a simple colophon of information was inadequate to document the amazing nature of these collaborations. Well, that, and the fact that printing a few pages had now increased to more than it was practical to churn out of my tired inkjet printer and I kept getting questions about the process, the participants, and individual images and so on. The solution was to expand the colophon information into a book-length manuscript and let participants download the digital version and make the printed version available to everyone that wants to tag along in our great adventures.

Each artist gets their own page with image and blurb

The book City of the World 2012: Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Print was born and is now available through Amazon.com in both print and e-book versions. It includes not only the panels and the maps of all the participants but each participant artist is featured in their own page where they comment on their unique images. Publishing the book essentially turned the project into a recorded social event. Each participant contributed a lone image, unaware of the images submitted by their unknown neighbors. The print and later the book, gathers all these unique individuals and establishes a conversation of images and text, encompassed by the concept of the larger image, a great city of the world. An artistic print party of global proportions!

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

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Welcome to My Head

Ideas, ideas

Inside my head: books, tools, sketches...kind of messy but it works

The creative process starts differently for every artist and the question "where do you get your ideas?" is one we artists often have to answer. The answer, of course, is...how the heck should I know? In my case, the closest I can come up to explaining how ideas come to me is...er, well! ideas come to me!
I may be walking around, tending the garden, working on a home project, driving (many of them driving), and all of a sudden, screech to a halt, THERE it is! Immediately I have to stop what I'm doing, let it simmer in my head for a while, turn it around, explore it, view it inside out, and then, if I still think it might be a good image, jot it down someplace.

I am not one to starve for ideas, often have a bunch of colorful little electronic post-it notes on my computer desktop with things like "explore 3D bas-relief versions of older prints," or "take print x, make it more romantic," or "add earthy feel to print y" and so on. Many get tossed, some come to fruition at one time or another.

Sketching

Sketch for City of the World, previous puzzle project

That's probably where sketching comes in for almost every artist I know but I just really "sketch" in my head until the darned thing explodes out my ears onto paper or block (lately, Photoshop and a Bamboo graphic tablet).

But these puzzle prints are a bit different because they require a very specific type of idea/concept. The overall design has to follow the theme, of course, but be almost "invisible" and subordinate to the marvelous individual contributions from the participating artists. The design also has to be fairly simple and unify the whole collection of tiny gems together so that it will be pleasing from afar, and at the same time call the viewer closer. Nothing like restrictions to make an artist panic! So I have to sketch and discard many along the way, just like everyone else.

Final sketch for the Fantastic Garden, puzzle print IV

Peace Puzzle Sketches

This being my fifth shot at this, I jumped right in with a few elements that speak peace to me. After about two days in the studio (off and on, I go outside a LOT), here are some loose ideas on paper. I am liking the nature feel, may ditch the dove and add some peaceful landscape elements. Don't really know yet, but the design is beginning to emerge.

A mess of sketches, small and large.
I sketch in magic marker to make myself even more nervous!

Peace beginning to emerge, love, river, sun, branch, bird...
or translated: love, life, light, nature, freedom...

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

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More Puzzle History: The Great Cairn

The Great Cairn 2008

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

The following project, a couple of years after we recovered from the trauma, was again a Barenforum project called The Great Baren Cairn.

This amazing collection of images was designed as a cairn, basically a pile of rocks traditionally made by travelers as they pass a certain spot on the road. The description I gave participants was this:

In my view, Baren (http://barenforum.org) is much like a cairn, with all sorts of people coming and going and everyone leaving their little stone as a marker, indication, simple "I was here", bit of guidance, pebble of wisdom, and an infinite etcetera. While the last puzzle sought an answer for the question "What is Baren?" the Cairn theme perhaps states "My contribution to Baren" or "How I fit into Baren" or simply, as a traveler might, "this is my footprint" but that's just three of many possible interpretations.

The Great Cairn, as I often referred to the beast, was a three panel print, logically following from the previous two-panel creation.

Project was started May 2006 and finished June 2008. Seventy-four artists participated, still within Barenforum.org membership. Three cherry wood blocks, same size as the previous puzzle were used to print three panels in a vertical format.

The image for The Great Cairn resulted in a more “puzzle-like” feel and the overall composition is indeed great to behold. The vertical format perhaps makes it look a bit more massive than the prior puzzle print and the images of participants representing each “stone” stacked up perfectly within the massive boulders.
And why would I stop there?

The Peace Puzzle: Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

How to sign up:

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle

Click on Back this Project green button

Choose a reward and check out

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Puzzle Project History: The beginning at barenforum.org

The First Puzzle Project 2004

Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

Just how did these fantastic projects

start? To answer this question, I had to go back to long lost archives and investigate what on earth prompted me to launch the very first Puzzle Project.

Puzzle Project #1: What is Baren? A puzzle By Its Members was Started June 2002 and finished January 2004. Two cherry plywood blocks, each 21 x 27.5 inches (53 x 70 cm) were used to print the two-panel print, each panel 22 x 30 inches (56 x 76 cm) on Rising Stonehenge Cream paper.

In the beginning there was an email posted to the humble and everlasting Barenforum (http://barenforum.org), a group of online printmakers that insist on exchanging prints year in and year out. Barenforum specializes in woodblock and woodcut prints with all their variations. Much more information and definitely an invitation to join Barenforum can be found on the website, appropriately named barenforum.org.

In June 2002, I sent out this message:

Went for a bike ride this morning, this being relevant only because the ride sent endorphins flying all over my brain. Endorphins, as you may know, are natural opiates which produce a gentle high (although in my case, maybe not so gentle?) and unbound amounts of energy. SO! I had been thinking about a collaboration project for a while and I think it is about time we do something extraordinarily fun!”

Details of the project followed. I was pleasantly surprised at the warm welcome that the project received. Even we over-confident and reckless folk have sinister doubts at times (what if you hold a puzzle project and nobody signs up?).

Well, people did sign up, 44 printmakers played the first puzzle game, What is Baren? A Puzzle by Its Members. This first one was in the simple shape of a spider web, a visual pun on the World Wide Web, which is how a group of printmakers manages to exchange art and vast amounts of information with one another.

I learned a ton of practical know-how as I put together the puzzle and tried to print 44 different styles placed closely together. Printing a diverse variety of images millimeters from each other was akin to setting the watering schedule for sage brush, roses and a mature pine tree all on the same watering station. Someone is going to be thirsty and someone will get overwatered!

Nevertheless, my good friend and expert printmaker Barbara Mason (http://www.barbara-mason.com) flew all the way to my humble studio to lend a hand. Together we printed the Baren Puzzle Project and unknowingly attended the first puzzle print party. As I watched the unexpected and wonderful result of our collective efforts, I realized that I might just have to make another.

The official First Puzzle Print Party with Barbara Mason

The thought that I could gather a bunch of strangers from all over the world and coerce them to come together and manufacture an artistic creation still baffles me to this day. And, of course, the concept itself, a collaborative project among people that probably will never talk to each other in person resulting in a perfectly balanced artistic composition, is still a bit of a mystery.

The name Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Prints was suggested as a name for the projects, a bit tongue in cheek, by one of the recurrent participants. Lest someone thinks that I take myself too seriously, I have to mention that the hyperbole is merely meant to amuse.

Art makes us do strange things and the amazing puzzle prints that come to fruition continue to tempt me to this day to start a new adventure just as soon as the ink dries on the last. And so there was another project already in mind as soon as the first one was mailed away.
Many of the initial brave printmakers are still participating in my nutty projects. Some have gone on to better and bigger, or at least, other things. Sadly, some have passed into the realm of fantastic gardens, and I cannot help to be aware of how friends come and go and how fleeting it is, the here and now. More the reason, the way I see it, to live life to the fullest.

Current project open for enrollment! 

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com/p/peace-puzzle.html

The Peace Puzzle is live!

Want to play puzzle with us?

Your task as an artist will be to:
1. Sign up and spread the word to get more people to sign up
2. After the project is funded, you will receive a request for your address from me. Answer promptly!
3. Soon after that you will receive a block of wood, blank on one side
4. Design something that means PEACE to you and carve it as a relief block
5. Mail it back to me with some information I will request

That's it! Then you wait patiently for your huge print and book to arrive.

How to Sign Up

NOW Go to: http://tinyurl.com/peacepuzzle
READ everything, watch the video if you are into silly, but please understand the project!
Feel free to ask me questions any time (...anytime I'm awake, that is) 1000woodcuts@gmail.com
Choose an ARTIST level of participation on the right of the page where it says REWARDS and click on the reward you want. Follow instructions to check out.

Artist Levels explained here and in the project

Here are the artist levels you will find in the Kickstarter project. In order to participate you have to sign up (pledge) for one of these levels! If you are feeling overly generous, remember you can always pledge more (for example: click on the Single Participant level, but pledge $100).

ARTIST - SINGLE PARTICIPANT LTD-120
You get to play! You agree to design and carve a tiny wood block under the theme PEACE, and send it back to me. After the printing you will receive the SIX-PANEL+ print The Peace Puzzle (each panel 22 x 30 inches or 56 x 75 cm). You also get the book Peace in Print with your individual image and blurb to share with the world.

ARTIST - TWO PARTICIPANT RATE LTD-20
You get to play with a friend and save! Two artists-one address. You both agree to design and carve a tiny wood block under the theme PEACE, and send it back to me. After the printing you will each receive the SIX-PANEL+ print The Peace Puzzle (each panel 22 x 30 inches or 56 x 75 cm). You also get the book Peace in Print with your individual image and blurb to share with the world.
HINT: Great value if two artists want to join resources under the same address!

ARTIST - GROUP OF 4 PARTICIPANTS SPECIAL  LTD-10
You get to play with your friends and save a lot! FOUR artists-one address. You all agree to design and carve a tiny wood block under the theme PEACE, and send it back to me. After the printing you each will receive the SIX-PANEL+ print The Peace Puzzle (each panel 22 x 30 inches or 56 x 75 cm). You also each get the book Peace in Print with your individual image and blurb to share with the world.
HINT: Great value if a group of artists want to join resources under the same address!


Don't forget to tell everyone you know and shout it loud on the streets to people you don't know!
Use the tag #peacepuzzle

Peace




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Preparation for the Peace Puzzle

Kickstarter

I am again using the Kickstarter.com platform to raise funding in order to launch the next great Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Print. The main reason remains that we can involve non-artists to help with crowd-funding the project so that we can keep costs down for participating artists (and me!).
Preparing a Kickstarter project is quite a bit of work! I needed to slap together a silly video, create a picture/logo, decide on and create rewards, draft a budget so I could price things reasonably but to cover the project, create a story-line for the Kickstarter page, upload pictures, get finances ready and review everything 100 times.

The Fantastic Garden 2013

Book "Growing the Garden" chronicles the project

Peace Puzzle

What better way to start the year than with images of peace in our heads? I am not quite done with all the details and will be fine tuning through the weekend. I am definitely not done with the design because I don't kow how many artists we will get this year but I'm hoping at least 120! That's six 22 x 30 inch (56 x 75 cm) panels, our biggest yet! We could get as many as 200 artists! That would be 10 panels???!! Ooooooohhhhh...

Spreading the word to supporters is key and will greatly help so I'm creating the tag #peacepuzzle for using on Facebook and Twitter! And we have a logo! Some of you will recognize the entries from the Fantastic Garden, our last puzzle project.

#peacepuzzle our official logo

Changes this year

One very important change this year is the addition of two artist categories for helping artists save a bit of money while still covering expenses. In addition to the single-artist entry, there will be a two-artist-one-address entry and a four-artist-one-address entry, each discounted from the single artist category. Last puzzle project we had a lot of participatns from various printmaking groups so maybe you can start getting together and planning to enter together, especially for those of you not in the USA. Each artist gets the full set of prints and a book, but everything is mailed together to a single address which saves time, money and work.

I will be creating a page dedicated to the puzzle right here on this blog with details about the project and an abbreviated calendar detailing every step. Other than that, this blog and my Facebook pages are the best way to follow along.

Almost ready!

Just wrapping up the last few details and waiting for my reviewers to get back to me with corrections and clarifications. Should be able to submit next week and launch right after. Here we go!


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The Puzzling Itch

Puzzle? Anyone?

Right about this time every two years or so I get an itch to lure my fellow artists into a massive collaboration effort. We call these projects, quite appropriately, Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Prints.
This will be the fifth such project and hopefully, the biggest to date. Right now the whole thing is just coming together as a Kickstarter.com project, but in the meantime, maybe I can whet everyone's appetite with a speedy video on what exactly is a puzzle print. Oh and some visual samples below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glpXWU3-vOw

Previous MCPPs

The City of the World 2012, 112 artists

The Great Cairn 2010, 82 artists

Scrambled websites! My marketing manager has gone mad!

Wacky Web

Oh how things have changed since my first website! First of the year and I find out my marketing "people" (that would be me) have all gone totally mad. In an effort to streamline web presence and make my life easier, something I attempt to do at the beginning of each year, I have changed things around a bit. Here is the recap:

Website

http://1000woodcuts.com
Still there but the index page now redirects to my more dynamic blogger blog, which is easier to update on the go and provides me with a nice mobile alternative. According to stats, almost 70% of web traffic is now through mobile devices. Celebrate simplicity!

Links to various pages still work and I will endeavor to link to things from the blog (you are reading the blog, if you are reading this). The only thing missing right now are the Projects and the browsing galleries but my shop is just as good for that. I just don't have the time or brain power any longer to keep up with the latest web standards and such. Out with the old, in with the new!

Blogs, er...blog!

http://1000woodcuts.blogspot.com
Ay ay ay! Sometimes my manic phases really complicate my life, I blame "that other" Maria. To start this glorious year, I am hereby happily reduced to ONE blog. That's uno, un, ein...that's it. Sigh.

I nixed the artfestival blog, kaput, bye bye. I merged the former puzzleprints.blogspot.com blog into this one. Posts are indexed by category on the left navigation and so you can read all about puzzle prints by clicking on the puzzle prints category. And so on. I will try to do a better job categorizing stuff.

Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, oh my!

I'd rather be outside!

Various ways to connect have not changed, although I'm mulling combining my FB page and profile just as soon as Facebook allows such a thing. The 1000woodcuts follows me everywhere so I'm easy to find.
You can LIKE my page, FRIEND me (it's a verb, trust me), FOLLOW me on the tweety bird and SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel if you are into silly printmaking videos. I tend to cross-pollinate posts as I see fit and all my Facebook posts magically appear on Twitter without my intervention.
For direct messages or a printmaking emergency, Facebook or Twitter allow messaging and my annoying iPhone lets me know immediately when someone is knocking at my virtual door.

1000woodcuts Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/1000woodcuts

Maria's Facebook Profile
https://www.facebook.com/maria.arango.diener

Maria's Twitter Profile
https://twitter.com/1000woodcuts

1000woodcuts YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/1000woodcuts/videos

That's it! Here is to keeping up on the go!