City of the World 2012
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| 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.
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| My call for help was answered in Oregon! |
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| 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:
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.
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| 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:
Click on Back this Project green button
Choose a reward and check out
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
