Cartoons are a part of our lives that we take for granted. Snoopy is more recognizable than the Mona Lisa in some parts of the world.
INPERSON
A-mazing
Art
Penn Hills artist Joe Wos carves a niche with interactive mazes.
BY PAUL GLASSER
As a youngster, Joe Wos set out to create mazes that were more challenging, and he’ s kept at it for more than 30 years.“ I love the tactile experience of drawing,” he explains.
Wos was born in North Braddock but has lived in Penn Hills for almost 30 years with his wife and three children. Mazes were a popular form of entertainment when he was growing up during the 1970s. He enjoyed solving the mazes on the backs of cereal boxes and restaurant placemats— however, he thought they were too easy.
“ They were frustratingly simple,” Wos laments.“ I love challenging myself.”
He started drawing more complex mazes and later was hired to draw caricatures at festivals and other events. Wos made $ 500 at his senior prom.“ I didn’ t have a date, but that wasn’ t so bad,” he recalls. incorporated cartoons as part of the puzzle. He calls them MazeToons and his creations are published in newspapers across the country.
MazeToons present some unique challenges that create optical illusions. Wos likes to stump people by leaving a very small space between lines, because the human eye will automatically ignore the gap. In addition, Wos adds color to his illustrations, and the eye will sometimes interpret a color boundary as a solid line. A common trick for solving is to start at the end of the maze and work backward, but Wos thwarts that strategy by working backward. He eschews symmetry and tries to avoid creating illustrations that follow the same general pattern.
“ You have to learn how to see things in a way that breaks the normal rules and thought process,” Wos explains.
No matter how skilled fans are, Wos always stumps them with a MazeToon on April 1 that’ s impossible to solve.
Cartoons are a part of our lives that we take for granted. Snoopy is more recognizable than the Mona Lisa in some parts of the world.
Creating a maze is fun because it’ s an interactive art form.“ It’ s a work of art that isn’ t complete until someone solves it,” Wos explains.“ It’ s one of the oldest interactive art forms.”
Teachers encouraged Wos to pursue his dreams of becoming an artist, and he began to create innovative mazes that
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