Local maze designing company combines farming and art

BLACKFOOT -- I’m Natalia Hepworth here in Blackfoot at Wild Adventure Corn Maze, designed by local company Maze Play. Maze Play travels all over the country combining farming and art and coming up with crazy, creative, yet complex maze designs.

SOT: “It’s a marriage of technology and art, and that’s what’s really fun about it,” maze designer Chayce Whitworth said.

VO: The company was founded by Shawn Stolworthy in the late 90’s when he first heard of the idea of a corn maze. He built his first maze, The Wild Adventure Corn Maze, north of Blackfoot and since then has been traveling the country crafting award winning mazes.

SOT: “We do about 110 corn maze designs all across the Unites States and Canada,” Whitworth said. “We’re able to probably draw faces and make things more recognizable than most people are.”

VO: Designers work for 20 to 30 hours mapping out a maze on the computer screen. They infuse art with mathematics, and global positioning to create functional and enjoyable maze trails.

SOT: “I work with the clients very closely to be able to get their ideas from conception in their head, to working on the computer, to out in the field, so it’s a visual masterpiece in large proportion. (It’s) something that’s really fun for people to go through,” Whitworth said.

VO: This year for the Wild Adventure Corn Maze, Stolworthy and his crew tried something new.

The now owner of the Wild Adventure Corn Maze Richard Johnson said this year Maze Play gave his corn maze a more cutting edge design.

SOT: “This is our 5th year of doing mazes, and I’ve never had a maze be this crisp, and this sharp,” Johnson said.

SOT: “We tried a lot of new things this year on that maze,” Whitworth said.

VO: Instead of mowing down the designs out of grown corn, the maze was planted in the desired formation. This years theme is a “Out of this World,” with an outer space cutout.

SOT:

VO: Johnson says he enjoys being the local resource Stolworthy needs to test and tweak maze ideas to perfection.

SOT: “It’s fun because I get to see the latest technology put in play before anybody else,” Johnson said. You’ve got the face of Neil Armstrong in this maze, you’ve got the lunar module that lands on the moon, you’ve got the orbiter capsule as well, and then you’ve got the rocket. So we’ve kinda brought it all together.”

VO: Although he loves being the first client to experience the latest Stolworhty has to offer, Johnson says the most important aspect of the maze is about having a good time.

SOT: “What matters though is the quality experience you experience in the maze because of how precise everything is,” Johnson said.

VO: In Blackfoot, I’m Natalia Hepworth, EastIdahoNews.com