My sister-in-law, Narda, is an accomplished jigsaw artist. She puts together these incredibly beautiful jigsaw pictures. Of course some connoisseurs of fine art might prefer to call her an artisan. The artist being whoever conceived the composition and design. But if you would ever see the finished artifact of hours of patiently interlocking all the pieces to the puzzle, you wouldn’t quibble about the term artist. She is a genuine time-honored artistic collaborator. After all, da Vinci had his assistants to complete the Last Supper. And shouldn’t we give credit to those unsung artists who actually put together the Picasso in Daley Plaza?
Narda’s been doing jigsaw art for years. She’s done so many that she and her husband Joe have run out of walls to hang them on in their Bolingbrook home. Joe– who probably knows more about tropical fish than many marine biologists do—gets her pictures framed at the local Hobby Lobby. She’s partial to images of majestic tigers and other noble creatures in the wild.
She recently made a gift to us of a few of her masterpieces. Like the shimmering swimming dolphins above. The Hobby Lobby at 87th and Harlem did an exceptional job of framing it, and it comports well with the seashell pattern of the wallpaper border in our downstairs lavatory, in some way enlarging its small space. Don’t they say art can be expansive?
When you come to think of it, jigsaw art is a metaphor of life itself. We have all the pieces. But making sense of the picture takes a lot of patience and skill.
Filed under: art
The artist/artisan issue would be resolved if she got her own scroll saw.
Strangely speaking, the only jigsaw puzzle with more than about a dozen pieces I could complete was a road map of the state of Illinois. That was in the days when it wasn't a symbol of disgrace, nor when I-355 was on it.
And I'm sure she could go to some home decor store to get more standing partitions on which the hang the puzzles (sort of like Japanese screens, but sturdier).
I never had the patience either. George W. Bush worked in reverse. He came into office when the economy, some would say, was picture-perfect, and when he left, it was in all pieces.
So, are you saying that I got the honorary Ryan-Blago-Quinn edition of the map, but a couple of decades too early?
The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
I knew one day you would get an Oscar.