Game Time—Challenge Yourself With an Art Puzzle!

Was Chaz Bojorquez inspired by word games? It would seem so.

The artist grew up in East Los Angeles and uses Chicano graffiti brushwork style in his paintings. Placa /Rollcall is a list of his friends, his gang, in an elegant script that appears to be abstract patterns until one learns to identify the letters.

Here's a word game for you to play. Click on this link. A new browser window with a word game will appear. Print the page to your desktop printer. Now you have a gamesheet.

How many of the 25 art terms and artists' names that are hidden in this alphabetic mix can you locate and circle? Words appear horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, and words are spelled front to back and the reverse (for example, "art" or "tra").

Here are the words to look for:
Benton, Cole, Color, Dove, Draw, Eakins, Form, Hue, Johns, Line, Metal, Oil, Pastel, Peale, Pen, Pencil, Pop, Print, Rothko, Sculpt, Smith, Wood, Wyeth

Have fun!

Source: National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and Boston, New York, Toronto, and London: National Museum of American Art with Bulfinch Press, Little Brown and Company, 1995).

Pictured: Charles "Chaz" Bojorquez, born 1949, Placa/Rollcall, 1980, acrylic, 68 1/4 x 83 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist.