The First Puzzle Project 2004
Current project open for enrollment!
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!
