For our latest puzzle, we asked artist Jessica Labatte for an image from her Spotting series. The Spotting series embraces dust, a natural enemy of the photographer. In the digital photographic studio, “spotting” work is often completed by artist assistants since Photoshop tools, such as the clone stamp and healing brush, have made this a quick and simple process. To honor the assistant’s labor in the retouching process, Labatte leaves the Photoshop “spotting” layer visible in the final print. Inverting the typically hidden gestures of retouching reveals an individual assistant’s style and decisions regarding brush size, gesture, and scrutiny of what imperfections should be removed. The resulting marks create a virtual cutting away of the image revealing a perfect simultaneous contrast of color and tone to the background layer. The abstracting nature of this process coupled with cutting away of puzzle pieces creates a challenging and unique art object in the form of a puzzle.

500 Piece
18X24 inches assembled
Edition of 100
9.5X6.75 inch Puzzle Box

Puzzle will be shipped the first week of Dec.

Jessica Labatte creates constructed photographic images that explore the materiality of photography through light, color, illusion, and paradoxes inherent in photographic representation. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Associate Professor of Art at Northern Illinois University. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums including the Aperture Foundation, NYC, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; Hyde Park Art Center, Hyde Park, IL; Higher Pictures, NYC, NY; and Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL. She was artist-in-residence at Light Work, Syracuse, NY; Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists' Residency, Saugatuck, MI; and Latitude, Chicago, IL. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum.com, and Chicago Magazine. Her work is represented by Western Exhibitions, Chicago.