Mixerpiece

PreK Up–Anyone who has ever seen the artwork of Giuseppe Ragazzini, self-proclaimed painter, set designer, visual artist, and pictorial animator, will immediately recognize his imprint on Mixerpiece. The app is imbued with the artist's playfully quirky, imaginative Picasso-esque style, and his approach, which builds on the traditions of mixed media and assemblage. At its core, Mixerpiece is for lovers of art and visual expression who delight in creative play and the endless possibilities of collage.The easy-to-use interface is refreshingly visual and appealing. The landing page has just two basic options: "Create" and "Gallery," along with small buttons for simple navigation hints. In the first mode, the screen becomes a free-form digital canvas with an index of interactive and image options. The 200 images are organized into 11 categories (backgrounds, landscapes, objects, faces, etc.) represented by thumbnails.For some extra fun and a bit of perspective-shifting, the iPad can be jiggled, literally, to see what happens when the collage elements that were originally chosen are "shaken up" and replaced by random elements from the same categories. Once completed, a Mixerpiece masterpiece can be sent to a friend as a postcard, shared on Facebook or Twitter, uploaded to the app's gallery or deleted.Of note, particularly for older users, is that each of the images used in Mixerpiece comes from a master work of art. Holding a finger down on an picture brings up the original art along with information about it. It's not unusual, then, for a collage created with Mixerpiece to be comprised of elements juxtaposed side-by-side that have been created by different artists from different eras in different styles.