Johannes Vermeer's endlessly mysterious and compelling painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring," which is currently touring museums in the US, is often referred to as the "Northern Mona Lisa." The legendary painting served as a basis for this new work by John Leflehocz.

This is the second work in a new series of digitally printed pieces by Lefelhocz, the first of which, Mona in the Era of Social Butterflies, referenced Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" itself. The artist wonders: "What would Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" say if she had Social Media? Mashing up constructions that are slow to reveal and encourage dialog has always interested me. Playing on temporal and cultural opposites and combining visual elements that up close are flat and then transform into images that, from afar, become spatial are part of my method. Just as the textual characters on this work are seen as single characters in the form of virtual keys, into words, into a series of words that slowly stimulate a mental image and the ensuing provoking and counter-provoking is the strawberry and rhubarb in my cobbler."