When I set out to create this image, I was interested in the way people who collect games like to pack them up…often very neatly (bordering on OCD) in little plastic bags.  This reminds me of the way some people collect comic books.  Therefore, here I have some chess pieces frozen in containers to make sure they are perfectly preserved.   I have also ludicrously preserved the gloves one needs to use to handle such valuable items. In this case stalemate refers to the end of the game when you put stuff away.  But a stalemate is not a tie…It means everyone loses.  Its kind of like when you buy a toy, or comic, or game and are more interested in preserving it, than playing (it’s the nullification of the game). The serious activity of collecting something and preserving its value collides with the idea of playing.  
 
As I froze these pieces, I also could not help but think about the idea of freezing your Han Solo action figure in ice to simulate carbon freeze…something many kids did when I was younger.  Ironically this was more likely to ruin your figure than preserve it, but was a lot of fun.
 
However, this image is also a play on computer games and the idea of a frozen game.  That’s why there is a mouse plugged in to the frozen screen above.   When you play a computer game and it ends abruptly that’s kind of like the ultimate stalemate.  There isn’t a winner.  Computers are complex when it comes to play because on one hand they open a lot of different avenues for playing but on the other they can freeze play.  They can do this both literally and metaphorically.  When I say computers can freeze play metaphorically, I am suggesting that they reduce or nullify play in significant ways…not least of which is the fact that no matter how interactive they are, in the end you are usually (in reality) sitting in a room by yourself.  On one hand, at the current time, we don’t have a lot of other options.  On the other, we have been playing by ourselves for a long time now.

Twenty years ago I was really interested in creating fictions within my art. At that time I made a series of work based on a photograph of bird poop that I digitally altered to make look like abstract paintings.   I printed them as if they were posters of the painting and I even created a web site for a fictional gallery complete with reviews by phony critics and  a 3D walk through of a gallery that didn’t exist.  Of course, there was plenty of evidence that it was fictional…that’s not the point.  The point is related to the idea of make believe.  When children play, make believeis an important part of the process…and that’s true for adults too. Most games involve some kind of make believe as part of the simulation. The illusion does not have to be complete…you are supposed to pretend.  
 
The first image I made for the My Secret Decoder Ring series was called Lemon Sharpie because the plant/mandala portion was an image of a lemon tree completed with a linear black line (sharpie).  But I thought it sounded like the name of a drink.  Therefore, I looked it up on the internet and…I did not find such a drink.  Instead, I invented the recipe, made the drink, and created a photograph of it (with a rubber glove in it, of course).  The final step was to put the recipe and the image in a book so that we can make believe it’s a real drink.
 
One of the best parts about this idea is that I can put it on Facebook and continue to pretend it’s a real drink…of course people will need to play along since the rubber glove alone is a big tip off…never mind the copyright notice! I almost went so far as to degrade the image of the drink to make it fit in the book (make it look duller) but I could not bring myself to do it….and why bother with those other clues right there.
 
One last point…the relationship of seriousness to play.  This endeavour asks people to play along with the idea that there is a drink called a Lemon Sharpie and it’s in this book, etc.  But everything I post on Facebook about it will be technically true…and in fact it now is a real drink, and to be honest—it’s pretty good.

The series is complete now and if you look in the gallery the images might line up in a way that forms a game of Tic Tac Toe (depending on your device).  In fact, the series could be hung on a wall and, once in a while, moved around in the process of playing a game. Tic Tac Toe might not be the most engaging game once you get to the point where you realize it should always end a tie.  However, transformed into a vehicle to play with the arrangement of art, I hoped to breath new life into the game and the art. After all, most people don’t want to look at images that long…and they usually don’t want to play with them either, especially in a gallery.  That doesn’t bother me--it’s a matter of time and place.  But I think if someone had these images in their home on a wall, once in a while they would play Tic Tac Toe to rearrange them. In fact, knowing that was my intent for the work, they might even feel obligated to do so every now and then.  Thus, the creation of playable art!
 
This series continues to explore themes related to playfulness and/or seriousness. As mentioned previously, the images combine ludicrous representations of food and water with the relatively serious concept and form of a Mandala….and it’s all set out on my kitchen floor!  However, this work is also about codes, text, and communication within art.  Each week I made three more images and each set of three had a different message printed in the Wingdings font around the Border.  The viewer could spend some time trying to figure out the meaning…but of course they usually will not, and that’s the point. The text is in Wingdings so that it will not be read. It is an unknown, but the viewer is aware that it means something, and that adds to the mystery and potential of the image, which is much better than simply reading something. 
 
Furthermore, Tic Tac Toe is interesting because it uses text but not as words.  I am often tempted to put text into images and I usually manage to restrain myself…after all, to me it feels a bit like cheating.  But the X’s and O’s in Tic Tac Toe are game pieces and are removed from their alphabetical function and other communicative considerations (e.g. hugs and kisses).  The reason text can be so precarious in an image is that the inclusion of text, on or near a photograph, can significantly alter one’s interpretation of the image. 
 
Nevertheless, there is a rich tradition of using text in modern art. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were two of the first modern artists to include text within their images. During the period of synthetic cubism, they would often paste the word, “Jou” into their collages. They typically clipped out the letters from the word “Journal.” The French word “Jou,” translated into English, means Play. I find that particularly interesting. Also consider Rene Magritte’s, The Treachery of Images (the image of a pipe with the words “this is not a pipe” written in French underneath). Magritte was reminding us of how difficult it is for us not to think of images as the things they represent.  This is because we are so focused on the act of communicating that when someone lifts the veil on the system of communication, exposing its workings (as many post-modernists have done), it can be a little disorienting.  
 
In terms of systems of communication, I find photographs with text in them particularly interesting. A photo with text in it includes all three types of signs defined by Charles Sanders Peirce.  Text is symbolic, because it has no visual relation to its meaning.  The images in the photo are iconic, because they look like what they represent.  Photographs in general are indexical, because they are caused by what they show. So, I think it’s fair to say that the use of text brings a variety of concerns to a photograph, and in this series, I tried to play around with some of those issues.