Maria Arango Diener

City of the World 2012: Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Print Maria Arango Diener 1st edition

Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Prints are huge woodcuts created and instigated by printmaking artist Maria Arango Diener. City of the World 2012 is the third of such projects and probably not the last. Project SUMMARY Generally speaking, a puzzle print is any print in which the block is sawed into pieces, each of which is carved and sometimes inked separately. The "puzzle" is then assembled at press and printed as a single image.

A Collaborative-Puzzle-Print is a special kind of puzzle print whereby a humongous block or three are painstakingly sawed into many many many funny shaped pieces. Each of the pieces is then flown across the world landing squarely in the carving bench of dozens of brave printmakers everywhere. Each artist carves their little piece, sometimes unaware of the "big picture" but always under a theme.

The coordinator receives back the tiny blocks and assembles them one by one until all come home. The coordinator then assembles and prints the entire puzzle composed of wonderfully carved images. Each printmaker then receives a rather large print of the entire project.

THE THEME for this project is "City of the World", as tightly or loosely interpreted as each participant wishes. The overall design interprets the theme literally, that is, the pieces could be part or entire cars, trucks, apartment windows, houses, clouds, planes, park benches, trees, shops, pieces of street or sidewalk, buses, and a very long etcetera. The piece each participant receives may or may not be recognizable and the shape may or may not influence the individual's design. The design may be how an individual sees themselves "in their corner of the world"; how they perceive themselves within the world or the world of printmaking; a representation of their actual place in their city or town; more generally "home"; their view of their city or town, again, etcetera. Anything goes in the City of the World.

Chronology and Print Information The City of the World 2012 was started in 2011 and completed in about a year. The resulting print spanned 6 wood panels and therefore 6 sheets of 22 x 30 inch paper, resulting in a print around 30 inches tall by almost 9 feet wide.

THIS BOOK is an expanded colophon of information about each panel, each piece, each printmaker and each image that composed the entire monumental woodcut.

The sections of the book include:

-Entire image reproduced -Key to the image -Participants -Each piece with participant comments -Process photos with explanation