"From 1993-2008 I created some twenty-five short-form 16 and 35mm films, many of which included my own hand-drawn animations of comic personae rendered in India ink and gouache on paper, others which presented investigations into the religious imagination and labors of love and money.
"While making films I also served as a cartoonist for a newspaper, and also as a visiting lecturer, which brought me to New England from the West Coast. I began to paint. I funneled all the creative energy I had previously channeled into moving images into a single pictorial space. Painting did not require sound engineers, lab processing, protracted distribution. I painted in private; one image might span the course of an entire year, maybe two. Then, in 2013, as an experiment for a friend, I reproduced one painting as a 1000pc jigsaw puzzle. I have a complicated relationship with commodity culture and mass reproduction but, at the same time, felt the populist project of puzzling to favor the economics of our decade – a big recession leaving many people deeply disenfranchised. So, I began offering puzzle assembly at open studios and found myself mesmerized by the communal efforts. I began placing puzzles in public spaces, in particular those that centered upon healing…oncology units, etc. I also started setting up puzzles on the streets of New York and Providence. In Rhode Island I began partnering with a cafe to offer Pie and Puzzle Happy Hour every Sunday. Public puzzling, like the cinema of my earlier life, offers an opportunity to spawn an instant community that seeks to cooperate, collaborate, and connect. World peace, piece by piece?"
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