Back to School with Aimee Stewart
As I’m writing this blog, it’s September 1st – shortly after the midpoint of Labor Day weekend. After a gray, cloudy morning, the sun has peeked through the clouds to say hello before Sunday draws to a close. Though the season doesn’t officially end until later in September, Labor Day is that last backyard party punctuation of summer fun before the reality of fall comes crashing into our lives.
Even though I’m long out of school at this point, this period at the tail-end of summer always reminds me of back to school season. In high school, that meant buying school supplies – new pencils, notebooks, a backpack, maybe even a new pair of shoes. In college, that meant picking up textbooks for a brand-new set of classes and moving back into a dorm room. I went to college at NYU here in the city, and every time I walk around Washington Square Park (the epicenter of the university’s campus life), especially around move-in day, I get a rush of nostalgia remembering those heady days.
I think what it is about that time is the air of possibility: the new start that each year, either in school or in college, would bring. New opportunities to learn, and new class rosters which meant the possibility of new friendships and social connections. As an adult, it's much rarer to experience those periods of newness, unless you’re starting a new job or taking an adult learning class, which makes the nostalgia factor for those long-ago days even more heightened. When I see my puzzle friends after a bit of time without them, I get some of the same adrenaline rush that I used to get during a new semester at school.
I’ve written before about how Aimee Stewart’s puzzles have evoked memories for me. To me, she’s a kind of populist Proustian propagator of happiness, a conjurer of memories in the form of colorful images. Like Lisa Frank – the patron saint of 80s and 90s folders and stickers – Aimee’s puzzles often put an extraordinary spin on ordinary subject matter.
My favorite of Aimee’s puzzles for back-to-school vibes is the 1000-piece My Awesome Collection 1989 by Buffalo Games. She has a number of puzzles featuring various desktops, but this one is packed full of colorful pencils and erasers that perfectly encapsulate that time in elementary and middle school when desktop swag was the be-all and end-all.
For this puzzle, since there are so many different colors and patterns throughout, I took a slightly different and less sorting-focused approach than usual. After completing the border of the puzzle, I focused on the lined notebook page first, because it was the easiest section to separate out.
Instead of doing a really granular sort, I tried to group together pieces that I knew would go together in my sorting trays and complete them one area at a time.
I love how the finished puzzle looks. Aimee is great at putting together collage images that have so much variety throughout the puzzle that they keep you engaged while you’re working. I love how there are distinct sections within the puzzle – the pencil box, the graph paper, the lined notebook paper with its cute handwriting.
There’s so much detail packed into the puzzle that a single photo can’t really highlight it. I love the orange dinosaur eraser and the green unicorn.
There’s even a nod to NYC – the Statue of Liberty, in eraser form. Plus, Aimee usually builds in an Easter egg or two. In this puzzle, she’s written her name on the lid of the pencil box and included a fox eraser. Foxes are one of Aimee’s signatures. Look closely at others of her puzzles and you will usually find a fox hidden somewhere.
If you’re looking for another 1000-piece Aimee desktop puzzle, there’s also Coloring Days. This puzzle reminds me of art class in school with its watercolors, markers, and colored pencils.
If you read my fall blog from last year, you may recall my obsession with the 1998 film masterpiece You’ve Got Mail. “Don't you love New York in the fall?” Tom Hanks’s character asks, “It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.” Well, Dear Reader, a worthy substitute is this 1000-piece Galison puzzle, Phat Dog Vintage Pencils. You might say it gets straight to the point.
Crayola, of course, is one of the formative early childhood brands. Who doesn’t remember coloring with these crayons and reading off the names of the colors. Burnt Sienna, Periwinkle, Carnation Pink. Springbok’s 1000-piece Crayola Collector’s Edition puzzle has a really cool vintage aesthetic that I love.
If you’ve been reading my recent blogs, I’ve been loving New York Puzzle Company puzzles lately. This 500-piece puzzle of theirs, Inch by Inch, is such a charming representation of the teacher-led school groups that you sometimes see here in the city.
If you’re heading back to a dorm room – or know someone who is – it may also be worth having a glance back at my previous blog about Clementoni’s Frame Me Up puzzles. These are a unique series 250-piece puzzles that come with a cute cardboard frame so they can easily be hung on a dorm room (or other) wall.
I hope that you’ll have a happy back-to-school month of puzzling however you choose to get into the mood. Curling up with a pumpkin spice latte and a puzzle sounds like the perfect respite to me. I’ll be cheering on all of the students trundling bins full of belongings into new dorm rooms this fall, and looking back with a bit of wistful whimsy. Grab a cup of tea, sit down, and join me.
-Richard (@piecebypiecepuzzler / YouTube channel: Piece By Piece Puzzler)
