One of the last things I had to do before heading for the plane to Spain was to complete a puzzle with fourteen, very cool women.
The Vermont Arts Council has a new mega community arts project. It's the next progression from the Palettes of Vermont Project two years ago where 40,000 artists and individuals from school kids to grandparents participated painting a palette. This year's project, Art Fits, consists of thousands of puzzle pieces made of fine maple veneer. Adults who choose to participate will receive a wooden puzzle piece, and school kids will have one made of high quality paper.
Needless to say, when my very good friend Carol Fjeld asked me to do a
culminating activity for the Mother-Daughter book club that she helped organize nine years ago, joining in on Art Fits was the PERFECT project. These young women have been meeting regularly, choosing and discussing great books & sharing wonderful activities, with each other and their mothers, since they were in 4rth grade. Now they're all graduating and heading out into the world. I was honored to be their grand finale.
We met on a Friday night. Since it was a one shot project- we only had one evening to complete it- I had some ideas ready for them, and they went with an interlocking hands suggestion. It was a productive, creative and fun evening. Now they will always share one more tiny piece of the puzzle that is their lives, as they head out into the larger world.
I was looking to link the Art Fits name to the blog, and in the process came upon a VAC webcast that tells the story of the palettes wonderfully. I'm even in the video, in quick glimpses several times at the various functions. It also tells the story of how Brandon, our little Vermont town, became a poster child for the creative economy. The whole state is on the bandwagon now, but we got it rolling in 2002 with our Really Really Pig Show. Here's the video connection: Art Fits
The puzzle night with Liza was a great final event to our Mother-Daughter Book Club. We read so many great books together and did lots of cool things while we were at it. We traveled together, camped out and camped in, beaded, boated, rafted, ate lots of good food and cooked some awesome meals, watched a few movies, and critiqued a huge number of books! Liza and the puzzle project brought it all together for us as she had us start out with our hands across each other's pieces. After that, free reign and we produced 14 puzzle pieces as different and individual as we all are! Thanks Liza