Technical Exercise No. 6: Framing the Subject

My plan is to post on my blog every time I complete a new image, which should be about once a week.  Sometimes I may post other things as I’m thinking of them as well.  The image I completed this week, and put in the Current Work section of my Portfolio at www.jasonhunterfineart.com is calledTechnical Exercise No. 6: Framing the Subject.  
 
This image is a continuation of some other work I have done with regards to technical exercises and other art-related activities.  In this case, I have hands (in gloves, of course) framing a potential subject. Sometimes when artists are trying to determine what part of the scene they will draw or paint (from life) they will use their hands to make a frame and choose what will be in the composition.   When I am teaching 1st year college students to draw, I will often suggest they do this before they start drawing. 
 
The joke in this image is that I am actually framing my phone…where I have displayed an image of a lighthouse that I presumably found on the internet (don’t worry, I didn’t break copyright, its actually my photograph of the iconic lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove). In any case, it’s a bit of a riff on our reliance, or even dependence, on the internet.  As an artist, I am particularly interested in the way the internet affects the creation of art, which I tend to look at through the lens of theories related to simulacra (see Jean Baudrillard, and others, mentioned previously).  
 
But why rubber gloves, again? I have discussed my interest in them below and that stuff figures in here too—do you have any idea how dirty phones are?  Furthermore, I find their folds and semi-transparency interesting from a formal perspective as well.  But semi-transparency is also fascinating for other reasons…the idea of partially hiding something, or failing to hide it.  In fact, the very first rubber glove image I made was during my MFA and it depicted me wearing rubber gloves to stuff a piñata.  My supervisor suggested that perhaps I should try to hide my identity in the image and so I put a transparent question mark over my face, and failed to do so (he liked that even better). So, gloves are part of the way we try to distance ourselves from our actions and identity (no finger prints…), which is fascinating. Also, they are topical—but don’t worry, I promise I won’t do mask images…hmm, I might not be able to back up that promise.