This week’s image is a return to the comic book style art I used to enjoy as a kid.   As a result, I think it’s one of my most playful images yet.  It is also clearly inspired by the artwork of Roy Lichtenstein, an artist I have always found interesting.  Best of all, the inspiration for creating this artwork came from a comical incident that happened to me.  I attempted to flick a fruit fly that was irritating me and missed…also cutting my finger in the process—which bled everywhere.  I then imagined the fruit fly was some sort of supervillain and this might finally be my superhero origin!  I came up with the name “Sporange”…the only word that rhymes with orange (something a fruit fly arch villain might plot to steal).
 
The image also continues with the theme of PPE as it includes both rubber gloves and a mask…but this time they are more incorporated into my superhero costume.  However, the most interesting aspect to the image, for me, was the play with symmetry.  A number of my images over the past 6 months have been dealing with symmetry...most notably the Rubber Glove Angels, which are mandala shaped.  This time I tried to push and pull at the symmetrical balance in ways that might cause some visual impact.   Rather than explain it all, I will leave that exploration to the viewer. Nuff Said.

First of all, this image is the third in my “Technical Exercise.” series and it’s worth noting that I simply pick a number for each one (this is #8, out of 3).  That’s because part of the point of these images is to have a little fun with the entire notion of technical exercises, which normally would be done in a specified order, according to a curriculum.   But, of course, these are not really technical exercises.
 
This latest one is a combination of a self-portrait with one of  two diagrams I often improvise on the chalk board during class to illustrate the difference in tension between when one touches the border of an image with subject matter vs. when one doesn’t.   This phenomena may best be learned by comparing Matisse’s famous image of "Dancers" with his similar image of "Musicians."  In some beginner classes I will ask students to make similar little compositions (technical exercises).  But here the circles are photographs of chess pieces and oranges submerged in the snow and digitally combined.  As I made them, I thought of them as little pucks or petri dishes…which I suppose plays into two of my themes…play and (recently) germs.
 
The fun part of this image (for me) is the fact that although I balanced it, in a formal sense, due to the positioning of the face the viewer may be very tempted to turn the image 90 degrees. Thus, the failure of the technical exercise…even though one may follow all the rules of composition, there are other aspects at play. Form is only one aesthetic component of an image—subject matter and content also have their place. This image pits the balancing of form against the desire to consume content in a familiar way.  My hope is that people viewing the image on social media will turn their phones to the side and then maybe the screen will automatically adjust in a way that foils them…making the image interactive, and a bit of a frustrating game.
 
Once again I have included wingdings, this time to confound and/or overdo the stated goal of the image to activate the picture frame. The message in the wingdings (if decoded) reinforces their purpose in this regard. However, the wingdings also have their usual decorative role here as well.  By decorating the border, they help transform the entire image into what I believe is something like the back of a deck of “Jason Hunter” themed playing cards, or even Tarot cards. The images on the backs of cards are usually either formulaic (like the front) or so independent that they do not signify their relationship to playing cards in any way (pictures of buildings, landscapes, animals, etc.).  Somehow, I think the wingdings and other decorative qualities of the composition all work together to suggest this image is the back of a card.  And, if it was, you could easily turn this Jason Hunter playing card 90 degrees to examine the portrait.

​I have created three more Rubber Glove Angels by attempting to reproduce the accident that led to the first one. I have found that when I create something by accident, and then try to recreate the process, it’s never quite the same. This case was no different.  In some ways, the recreations never live up to the original. On the other hand, they are often far more polished.   I think some of this is probably psychological…the original accident achieves an additional level of significance precisely because it was a surprise.  Attempts to do it again seem contrived.
 
However, as I said previously, I make work that is contrived. It is contrived because it tends to be deliberately created rather than spontaneous. I don’t consider contrived a dirty world and, therefore, I appreciate these new, polished, and more deliberate Rubber Glove Angels.  I may even create a few more the next time it snows.
 
Creating these images is fun and playful in terms of the process and I believe several of the images themselves look playful in one way or another.  They seem to me to look like strange, organic creatures…maybe like the odd little characters in many of the paintings by Joan Miro. The best part about them is that they are kind of like a Rorschach test in that people tend to see different things in them. That act is, in itself, a playful undertaking…like lying on the ground and finding images in the clouds. The viewers of the Rubber Glove Angels seem encouraged to be more active in their interpretation. I have noticed so far that they are less likely to ask what my intention was, and more likely to volunteer what they think it looks like.  In doing so they take agency and complete the artistic activity that began when I made the image.  

This image came about as I was looking around my house (as usual) for ideas for a new machine.  Looking out the window I saw that the pile of snow on one of the flower boxes looked like a load of bread.  Bread is a very topical subject now since many people, locked down in their houses, have been obsessing over baking it…and even more so over sharing their images of the final product.  So, I figure now its my turn.
 
All that was required was to change the colours of it and presto…there was a loaf of bread sitting right there on my porch rail.  Of course, the question remained…how did it get there?  Well clearly, I built a machine that baked bread both inside and outside your house!  I envision this machine as kind of like an air conditioner.   Its sits on your window sill but instead of making the inside colder it can make things on either the inside or outside hotter.  This is the kind of leap of logic one can make living in a world where there are so many complex things that understanding becomes irrelevant. I noticed recently that commercials use the logic I have been using here on a regular basis.   A popular cleaner advertisement showed someone spraying the cleaner on giant red pill shaped germs and, through the power of digitization, they all vanished!  
 
This image still deals with transparency but to push things a bit further I did something different.   I went back to a more direct exploration of the concept of inside and outside…which, it is worth noting, is certainly there in an exploration of transparency.   I therefore used the same technique to begin the creation of the machine as I used with my earlier image, Two Sides Away From My Front Door.  Then, as I continued to edit the image, I made sure to emphasize the direct use of transparency within the composite of the machine.  I also repurposed my plug coins from the Dirty Money image as some sort of radiation warning and included some wingdings letters which, for a change, I will share…it says “Danger Due to Fake Radiation.”