top of page
Breaking The World Record For The World's Largest Hand Drawn Maze
Although doodle requests are closed, you can still help support this cause by donating to Living Arts Detroit HERE.
Breaking the Record
In 2020, during the Covid lockdown, many of our local art programs became underfunded. at the time, I ran a small traveling art studio called On The Gogh Studio, which provided art classes to schools, community centers and senior living facilities. Because schools and senior centers were the first to shut down, I found myself out of work and with a whole lot of students without a creative outlet. The maze began as a way to raise money to help and it as I drew it, it became more of a community engagement. And as people got involved, the maze evolved into something much bigger than the roll of paper it was drawn on.
In total, the maze contains over 300 doodles and names. When someone made a donation, they could request a doodle inside the maze path. This obviously made the maze creation process much, much longer, but I believe this is what made it worth it. If you were to unroll the maze, you'd find happy birthday's, portraits, memorials, anniversary's, pets and phrases special to those who requested them.
The biggest challenge was keeping up with all of the Guinness guidelines. This proved more difficult than drawing the maze itself. Below are the list of rules that needed to be followed, along with a few videos of the measuring process, a full time lapse and the official Guinness video.
• Maze path can not exceed more than 1cm
• Two independent witnesses must watch the entire process
• Entire creation process must be video tapped.
• Maze must be drawn in a public place where people can observe
• Maze must be proven solvable and show the solvable path
• Maze must be measured (I used a local land surveyor)
• Maze measurements consist of the maze Itself and not the paper it's drawn on
• Image of entire maze in one single photograph, unrolled (shown above).
All Videos
All Videos
Search video...
Largest Hand-Drawn Maze - Guinness World Records
00:00
Play Video
Guinness World Record! Full Time lapse-Breaking the Record for the World's Largest Hand-Drawn Maze
03:32
Play Video
Current Guinness World Record! Official Measurements: The World's Largest Hand-Drawn Maze
02:20
Play Video
Blog
Below are the details that I documented along the way as the maze was being drawn. This wasn't a necessary part of the guidelines, but it helped update those who were following along at the time during the record attempt.
Updates:
11/05: IT'S OFFICIAL!! Guinness has declared the World Record for the Largest Hand-Drawn Maze and WE DID IT!!!
11/04/2020: With the help from my friend, Evans Tasiopoulos, and the Mac Athletic Complex in Detroit, we were able to capture a shot of the entire maze in one photo!
10/25: Guinness World Records have gotten back to me and reviewed all of the maze evidence. It seems in order for this project to be a successful title, I will need to provide them with a photograph of the entire maze in a single shot! I'm a little nervous, as the weather outside slips into an unpredictable fall. For the last couple of days I will be searching for a location to unroll the massive maze, that's about 1.5 football fields in length. More details soon!
10/02: The maze was measured on 09.27.2020 at the Roseville Rec Center in my hometown. It needed to stretch across the gymnasium nearly 5 1/2 times to beat the record. First, before I tell you what happened, I'd like to pay respect to Eric Eckert, the current record holder that set this crazy record at 1072 square feet, and his dedication to creating such a monstrous maze. I can't begin to describe the amount of dedication and mental strength that it took to get to 3 months and 10 days worth of drawing. And creating the maze itself was only half the challenge. Meeting the Guinness guidelines were probably the hardest part of this challenge, as I couldn't just start working on it whenever I wanted. Restrictions from covid were another hurdle that needed to be overcome.
Click HERE to watch the measuring video.
The surveyors used several methods of measuring, using state of the art equipment and devices. We also stretched a 100ft tape measurer across the gymnasium floor for an instant measurement estimate for video purposes. When we first began to unroll the giant maze I had estimated the maze to be around 1200 square feet.
As the roll began to shrink, getting smaller and smaller, a tension filled the air as the paper roll completed its 5th stretch across the floor, realizing my estimate was much too high, the roll needed to go another 37 feet to reach Eric's record. Everyone in the room was on edge waiting to see if the maze would succeed. I stood by current record while the remaining paper was unrolled...with a sigh of relief from the entire room as the paper roll went passed my feet and up the the 48th foot mark.
The official measurements were 1126.3 square feet. One less day of work and I may have not had beaten the record. Even though the maze exceeded the current record, it will ultimately be up to Guinness to decide the outcome. The next and final step to this project is to collect and submit all of my video, media and documentation evidence to Guinness and hope for the best. I'll update this blog as soon as the results are determined.
09/19: The maze is finally done! It's been a busy weekend gathering all of the time lapse photos and arranging them into a full video, but it's done! You can view the full time lapse video HERE. Every second accounts for about one hour worth of drawing.
**measurements will be taken at the Roseville Recreation Center on Sunday, September 27th! Guinness requires 2 witnesses, a licensed surveyor and the measurements to be taken in a public venue while being recorded. This is the final step before I am able to submit the proper evidence.
Big thank you to Ayman & Rami at Land Specialists Surveyors in Macomb for agreeing to help measure the maze, as well as Sara Frederick and her team at Roseville Recreation Center for allowing us a space to measure it in. And of course, a huge thank you to Sherry McInerney and Sherry Allor for giving the maze a place to be created in since mid-June, which was their front window at Posterity Gallery in Grosse Pointe Village. They have also served as my 2 witnessed throughout this entire event and will be attending the measuring process.
Great big thanks to all of the maze sponsors who have stepped up to help Living Arts Detroit through their donations.
Art is so important for community, and I am humbled to be a part of such an incredible group of friends, family and complete strangers who have stepped up to help make this project what it was, record or not. Something that I always say, is that it takes a village. I'm proud to be a part of this village.
09/15: Last week of the maze and I'm well into the third month of the project. So far I've logged about 300 hours (About 250 drawing hours) and have used over 200 markers. Inside of the maze path, there are over 200 names, doodles and hidden images. As the end of the project gets closer and closer I feel that I'm extremely close to the current record.
09/01: Only about 100 square feet left until the record (I've estimated!) Doodle requests come to an end this week. The paper roll is getting pretty heavy, and I'm having a hard time rolling it up without curling up the edges. I'm giving myself 2 more weeks to push forward with the maze to pass the record by as much as possible before wrapping up the attempt. There are currently I'm burning through about one sharpie an hour! The Grosse Pointe News will be out for the final day when I draw the FINISH line. Stay tuned!
08/22: Read the latest news article, written by K. Michelle Moran HERE.
Whew! It's been a BUSY week. Took a few days away from the maze to spend time with the family on a camping trip. I've also been trying to focus a little more energy on other art projects, including some commissioned paintings and completing a new Boggess Art gallery display at the new Next Door Art Gallery. Art Revolution Taipei is also taking place now, kicking off to a great start with the sale of one of my favorite paintings 'Carlito el Cordero'! More info on that in the art section of the website.
Maze-making is a full time job outside of the World Record Attempt! Be on the lookout for 2 new book announcements this month. Join me via Zoom for an online meeting, where you can ask your heart out with any questions you might have for a chance to win a personalized 11x14 hand-drawn maze. Register HERE!
Coming up to the last few weeks of the record attempt, I'll continue to accept doodle requests up until. the very last few days of the maze. If I have time to get them in, I'll add 'em!
08/12: The maze continues! The finished maze portion of the paper roll is getting a little trickier to roll up, which means the finish line is getting closer! I've also started to put thought into what I was going to do with the maze once it's finished. Today the Friends of the Grosse Pointe Library made a generous donation to Living Arts Detroit, and in return have asked me to do a Zoom meeting August 26th for the public to ask questions about that maze. Looking forward to it! More updates about that soon.
08/01: There are a total of 45 doodles inside of the maze now and the completed maze is around 65% to the record! The guidelines say that I'm not allowed to have a lot of white spaces on the paper roll and I'm not sure if they are going to count the doodles towards the final measurement, so I'll have to exceed the record by at least a few hundred square feet just to be sure it beats the previous record of 1072 sq. feet, in the event any length is subtracted at the end.
07/25: The maze is slowly building momentum and more and more people are supporting this project by sponsoring a square foot! I'm so humbled and inspired by all of the incredible people who have stepped up to help support the cause. I'm preparing for an interview in the morning with CBS News.
07/15: It's been a quiet couple of days at the gallery. As the cases of Covid begin to rise again and masks become mandatory, the foot traffic has slowed. Donations have been steadily coming in and I'm so grateful for everyone who has been helping to support this great cause!
07/10: Having fun drawing doodle requests into the maze path. Just a little more than halfway finished to breaking the record and still feeling good about getting to the finish line! Today I tried putting the first half of the maze time lapse together and realized that some of the file names got mixed up, which hopefully won't cause too much of an issue later on when trying to put the time-lapse together. Everything still appears to be there, luckily.
07/02: Week 4 came to a close and I'm just shy of halfway to the record goal. With approximately 80 hours logged, the holiday still has me just a little behind schedule. I'm hoping to make up the time during the second half of the maze. One of the biggest challenges has been Guinness's strict witness guidelines. My two witnesses must be present and attentive throughout the entire attempt, which is proving to be increasingly difficult with everyones busy schedules and putting together the new plans for the next door art studio co-op.
This week I've also started incorporating doodle requests into the maze path! Click HERE to see a list of our amazing square foot sponsors and their doodles!
06/27: Week 3 came to a close, and I'm beginning to see some progress being made on my paper-roll! Yay! Though I realized awhile back that I'm going to have to do the first few feet of the maze over again because there's a maze path that exceeds the 1 cm path width in the maze, one of my official guidelines. I was trying to be creative and add some fun paths along the way, but after exchanging a few messages with Guinness, I'll need to replace this portion in order to be sure I'm adhering to the guidelines correctly. Luckily, I am allowed to use glue to portion/splice two sections of maze together as long as I document everything correctly!
06/12: Day 4 of my attempt to break the world record for the world's largest hand drawn maze complete! So far I'm approximately 40 sq feet deep into my 2000sq. foot paper roll.
06/09: The attempt has finally began! You can follow along LIVE on my facebook page from 10:00 AM -2:00 PM Tuesday through Saturday (Link: https://www.facebook.com/boggessart/)
05/17: The start date will be June 2nd! New Challenge: Guinness has instructed that no more than 4 hours can be logged by the the two required independent witnesses in a given amount of time. This is going to make maze production take a little longer, since I originally intended to work 8 hour days. But I'm still confident that it can be done! Here are the new details:
The attempt will be live at the Posterity Gallery in Grosse Pointe from 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Tuesday - Saturday. The gallery is closed Sunday & Monday.
04/21: The guidelines are in from Guinness World Records! Here are the conditions and updates as they occur:
*The entire attempt will take place live over the period of about 2 months and 200 logged hours. People and businesses will be able to show support if they wish by sponsoring a square foot of the maze in order to raise funding for Living Arts, a local organization that provides important art programs to Detroit schools and youth programs. Donators will receive a sponsorship certificate, you can even request a doodle or writing to be incorporated into the maze path!
*The entire process must be video-recorded & logged with 2 independent witnesses.
*Maze paths cannot exceed 1 cm in thickness.
*The record is for the area of the maze itself and not the paper it is drawn on.
*The current record was set by Eric Eckert from NY, who spent 160 hours, using 536 feet of two-foot-wide paper and 166 sharpies, for a total of 1072 square feet
*The paper roll I will be working on is 1000ft long and 2 feet wide, for a total size of 2000 square feet.
bottom of page