I was alerted to the Beguiled Art Gallery and Studio on the mainland region of Kakapo by Mona Eberhardt. Never one to miss a recommendation, even if Second Life decided not to play nice with me during the afternoon, I hopped over to take a look.
The parcel, occupying the greater part of the region, is operated by the Wanted Dead or Alive group / Jilla Lamar, and features the Beguiled Studio (somewhat in need of repair) and the Beguilded Gallery. Between and around them sit the most verdant of gardens, with paths, cobbled trails, gazebos, water, butterflies and more, populated by nymphs, children and Victorian gentlefolk out for a stroll or fiddling with those new-fangled photographical devices.
At the moment, and running through until May 4th, The Beguiled is featuring a Spring Art Walk, offering visitors the chance to follow the paths around the gardens and take-in artwork on display – and for sale – by a number of SL artists and photographers, with a stroll along the paths and trails allowing you to witness work by Skye Donardson, Alles Klaar, partners AugustaMary and WhisperAtNight, Sabbian Paine, Aelin Quan and Stephen Venkman. At the same time you can enjoy the scenic beauty of the gardens themselves, and the incredible wealth of detail Jilla has incorporated into The Beguiled.
And I do mean “wealth of detail”. This is not a place to be rushed; doing so means that while you may well catch all of the artwork on display along the sides of the paths, you’ll still miss out on a lot – such as the wonderful little scenes Jilla herself has put together and which are reached by short climbs up convenient ladders (although in most cases, I’d recommend camming up to them to fully appreciate them).
Jilla encourages people to not only visit the garden, but also to use it as a backdrop for their own photography. For those who do so – indeed, for any visitors – I would pass on a couple of words of advice. Unless you have a graphics card with serious Oomph, you might want to both ramp-down your draw distance (particularly if it is well up into the hundreds) and also think about not running in deferred and / or with shadows active (just turn them on to grab your photos). I found my Ge9800 GT (with a Gb of memory) was tossing textures out of its pram as fast as I could walk around the paths when in deferred.
Also, should you visit, make sure you take a little time to visit the Beguiled Gallery, where more of Jilla’s own work is on display.
The Beguiled is one of those wonderful mainland discoveries which can be hard to come by, but once found are always treasured. Very highly recommended, and my thanks to Mona for dropping me a line about it.
Related Links
- The Beguiled Art Gallery and Studio (Rated: Moderate)
- Art Galleries and exhibits (past and present) reviewed in this blog
- SL Destinations in this blog
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 