Puzzle night has always been a hit at an annual gathering in the mountains that’s been going on for 20+ years. Though we’re online this year, the puzzle was still a huge hit orchestrated by North Carolina’s Julie Eakes.
Each player created a 3″x3″ polymer tile based on the line drawing that Julie sent via e-mail. Anything light on her black and white clue drawing must be a light value, darks must be dark. We had no clue about the theme or the color scheme.
Julie secured permission to use Thomas Wimberly’s poignant and powerful Global Forefront sketch. We submitted jpeg photos of our square tiles to Julie via email.
She based this ingenious group project on the im-a-puzzle.com site which meant that Julie had to upload our 30 files to them. Today we each tried to solve and assemble the puzzle virtually on our computer screens. Usually, we elbow and jostle as we crowd around a table to figure what goes where. We missed the cheek-to-cheek jostling but the laughter and competition were undiminished.
Now, each of us must mail our actual tile to the puzzle winner. It felt liberating to have creative good times. Click on the photo to see if you can pick out any artist just by her style.
Fiona Abel-Smith ,
Amazing, each tile is beautiful, but together, wow, what a powerful image.
Amy Goldin ,
OMG This puzzle is amazing. Wow and Wow and Wow. We did a similar thing in my child’s school when she was young. We had several hundred sketches from all the kids to make up a portrait of Martin Luther King. It all got put together into a poster that was auctioned off.
Doree ,
This is glorious! I wonder…will you post the names of the artists and their squares? I also am curious about how that little face happened to appear in the lower left corner!
Linda Pearl ,
Fabulous! What a wonderful image and collaboration! Julie, you amaze me.
CamilleLudlow ,
What fun!
Tracey Lowe ,
This is incredible! The whole process! The original artist must so impressed with this result! I know I’d be speechless! Wow!
gael keyes ,
I love this idea!!!!!!
gael keyes ,
I love this idea! And very timely.
Barbara McGuire ,
Great fun. Love love love the different personalities creating the whole. Who is the puzzel ‘winner’? Was it a drawing or a vote? There’s only one artist I recognize – so the ‘who dunnit’ is very intriguing. Thanks so much for sharing this. – Barbara
vio ,
Fantastic idea! Good to see people finding clever ideas to countinue their lives as normal as possible.
Lorrene Baum-Davis ,
I am gobsmacked!!!!
What incredible fun you had.