Two new community puzzles depict Henning scenes

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

Puzzles tend to have a unique ability to bring people of different backgrounds and ages together. Whether it is searching for one missing piece, coming up with a strategy to complete the outer edge, or even just working together to complete a common goal, puzzles can bring out the best and worst parts of individuals. 

A recent community puzzle brought the town of Henning together in a rather unique way as they completed not one, but two large puzzles totaling 39,000 little cardboard pieces. 

Perhaps even more astounding than the overall size of the two puzzles was the fact that just three of the 39,000 puzzle pieces went missing. Each of the three missing pieces were later fixed by Landmark Center Executive Director Broten, as opposed to leaving that all-to-familiar blank space on an otherwise masterpiece of a puzzle. 

Broten said the idea of the community puzzles came about after several people in the community suggested a community puzzle to bring people together, which was similar to what was done some time ago in a small town in South Dakota.

“I think it was suggested to me by a few people in town that this would be a good idea,” he said.

As part of the South Dakota puzzle project, the community put together an expansive puzzle that Broten thought depicted the earth. Wanting to take the next step in creating a community puzzle unique to Henning, Broten got to work to create a 15,000 piece puzzle of the Landmark Center to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the local facility and a 24,000 piece puzzle of Henning history. Each community puzzle was broken down into boxes of 1,000 puzzles so people can bring home one of 15 boxes with 1,000 pieces of the Landmark Center history or 24 boxes with 1,000 pieces each of the Henning history puzzle.

“I said if we are going to do this lets make it custom to Henning,” he said. “We first designed it as a Landmark puzzle that was divided into 15,000 pieces, but we figured out that would only go out to 15 people.”

So Broten and the group got to work and quickly created another, slightly larger, puzzle that depicted some important landmark and features of Henning as a whole. That puzzle was 24,000 pieces, which allowed for a total of 39 puzzles of 1,000 pieces apiece that needed to be put together as a group, at home as individuals, Willow Creek Assisted Living or even at the school during some break time for students. 

“Each person that does one of these will take home a puzzle and a board and bring it back to us flat on the board,” said Broten earlier this year. “The idea was to break it up into these individual thousand piece puzzles that will butt up against each other.”

The puzzles themselves are quite large in stature as the one featuring the Landmark Center is 5’x10’ with the one depicting the Henning history being slightly larger at 6’x12′. The Landmark Center puzzle is currently on display in the porch area of the community facility, while the larger City of Henning depiction is on display at city hall. 

The puzzles not only provided a way to provide a unique art feature to town, but also brought the community together as groups of people and individuals all hand a hand in creating the masterpiece—literally at one piece at a time.

“The people who worked on it really took pride in it and said this is the part I worked on,” said Broten. 

Funding for the large community puzzles came from assistance of a grant from the Lake Region Arts Council and with funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, the Landmark Center is spearheading two community puzzle projects.