More Rubber Glove Angels

​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.