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A still life is an image of primarily small inanimate objects that can be moved around easily and typically consists of food items, flowers, household objects, etc.  By this definition, some  of my work might be considered still life. However, many of my images include a hand with a rubber glove on it interacting with the still life in some way. The inclusion of a hand potentially helps the image resist categorization as a still life. This image has a hand in it as well, but it is not wearing a rubber glove, and it is instead submerged into the still life objects. Furthermore, this image contains subject matter (a hand holding a raw egg) that is possibly off putting.  The title here has the same effect as the phase, “don’t think of an elephant”.  Of course, as soon as you say it, you are thinking of an elephant. In this case, the image may as well have a rubber glove in it.  In fact, the viewer might even wish that it did after seeing the title.  That’s my goal anyway.
 
Many of the themes of play, humor, obsessive compulsive triggers, etc. continue in this work.  Like most of the rubber glove images it plays with that boundary between what something means at any given moment in time vs what it could mean if we allow our ideas to intermingle or go astray.  What does the viewer want this image to mean?  Are they concerned with what the artist intended?  Are they trying to keep it from meaning something in particular?  I think there is something sublime when meaning rests just out of reach because that’s where it sits most comfortably. I suspect I am not the only artist who feels this way. 
 
One last point.  In virtually all of my work I am the only human being in the image.  It’s been decades since someone else was included. However, since this image includes a hand without a rubber glove on it…it seemed important that it be someone else’s hand.

Specimens are things that we collect as an example. However, the world has also come to suggest that the example is a particularly good one that is deserving of being collected. In this image, I have created a part natural and part artificial leaf. With spring just around the corner, I was contemplating what kind of photography I might do outside in the near future. However, that time is not upon us yet so I am still stuck with the house plants and other household objects. This one is a combination of a shower head with some calcification and a leaf from the lemon tree. The shower seemed appropriate because…well, “April showers bring May flowers.”  But the goal was to make an alien-plant that defies the duality of natural vs. artificial…or, things that belong outside vs. things that belong inside.
 
The rubber glove was a natural addition because I imagine one might wear gloves when handling particularly unique, valuable, or delicate specimens.  However, I thought that maybe it should be torn suggesting that some difficult work was involved in collecting this object. It’s also covered in soap. Rubber gloves, as objects used to protect oneself from germs, relate to obsessive compulsive themes; therefore, I am surprised I have not put soap on them before.   However, I also imagine that there may be some decontamination procedures involved in collecting robot-leaf specimens.
 
As I have mentioned before, I like to use borders because to me they represent rules and limits  which relates them to the idea of play in some ways. I decided to put wingdings in the boarder again because they are playful as well…and, once again, the viewer can choose to interact with the work by deciphering the writing. This time I was much more careful about how the wingdings lined up in relation to the corners and edges—emphasizing their formal function.   On the other hand, I didn’t have anything particularly important that I needed to be written so it seemed their role in terms of content was reduced. Maybe it’s because I mentioned Picasso in my last image, but this made me reflect on the synthetic phase of Cubism where Picasso and Braque were, more or less, just playing with the cubist themes and languages in decorative and formal ways and not really advancing the concept much further. Perhaps this image marks the synthetic phase of my Wingdings art. Now, in my synthetic period, the Wingdings have devolved into a purely decorative element; therefore, they no longer add meaning to the image.

Many of the images I have created lately have been heavily symmetrical, so this time I decided to make something balanced asymmetrically.  Since my original “Sporange” comic panel was about the “missing symmetricator,” I thought I would follow up on that theme with another comic.  I also was inspired by the stone tiles behind my stove which look to me like an abstract painting…a mix between the painterly abstraction of Jackson Pollock and the hard edge images of Piet Mondrian.  Mondrian in particular was obsessed with creating a perfect frontal and asymmetrical balance within his images, so that seemed a great fit.  However, while I like abstract art well enough, I have never made an image which falls into the category of total abstraction. Therefore, I decided I would make the image, but immerse it within a narrative context. Naturally, since I previously established that Sporange is my super hero identity, this image would be in my secret identity as a mild mannered artist experiencing a crisis of conscience about abstract art.
 
The balance was fun to play with as there are figural and text elements both of which strongly attract attention. Then there are the images in the gallery themselves and how they fit in. Color balance was important but also repeating squares around the picture plane to relate everything back to the Mondrian-style image.  However, my favorite touch was warping the pepper and making it red so it would look like the big “M” in “meanwhile,” thus creating a counterpoint on the other side of the comic panel. 
 
Formal elements aside, this image once again references Roy Lichtenstein, who was interested in comics as pop imagery. However, he was also interested in their technical components which is why he painstakingly enlarged them printer-dot by printer-dot in his paintings. This is not unlike the concern I think Chuck Close had in some of his work to reproduce the way layers of film make images but with layers of paint. However, I am more interested in the relationship to Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills”. Sherman gave us one still from a movie that did not exist. However, because entertainment media are so ubiquitous, repetitive, and predictable we can make up the rest of the story in our heads. I think Lichtenstein’s images have the same affect; therefore I am also trying to take advantage of this phenomena. Finally, I would like to give a nod to Chris Crans.  Years ago he made an image depicting a museum/gallery setting titled,  “One Mao Away From a Man With a Tea Cosy On His Head” which was hilarious. Ever since I have been looking for a reason to make humorous image in a similar setting.

Finally, there is a little timeline of art history on display here.  On the far left we have a realistic image refencing the time when art’s main purpose was to depict the word.  Then there is an abstract image which comes from the modern art period where the concern was making art for art’s sake.  Finally, there is a pepper on a platform which has been duct tapped to the wall. I felt duct tapping a banana (or any other fruit/vegetable) would be too obvious so I taped the pedestal instead…as a reference to post modernism where the concerns in art tend to be narrative, multiple, and often metacognitive in relation to the entire endeavour.

Just a short posting this week.  As per my rule I made another Rubber Glove Angel because it snowed earlier in the week. That brings the total set of Rubber Glove Angels to a lucky number: Seven.   I think it's a good number, symbolically, when it comes to a series with the word angel in the title. I am aware that the number has a lot of significance in christianity, for example, representing things like "completion" and the "fulfillment of oaths."  So completing the set at 7 by fulfilling my oath to make rubber glove angels every week it snowed seems like a satisfying way ending to the work.