At the start of the week, I dropped into Monocle Man, the gallery complex operated by Lynx Iuga and Kit Boyd, to take a look at the exhibition by DustinPedroia. As I mentioned, the complex also includes spaces for artists to display their work, so to round-out the working week, I decided to jump back and take a look at the rest of the complex.
As noted in my first article (see Art with a Monocle Man in Second Life), Monocle Man offers free gallery spaces for 20 days at a time to artists wishing to display their work. These spaces can be found via the teleport disk located outside the front door of the ground-level gallery that also provides access to other points of potential interest for visitors (left-click the disk for a list of destinations, right-click and select Teleport to go to the selected destination).
The sky gallery (“Gallery” on a teleport disk) provides two floors with space for up to four artists. Currently the spaces are being used by ViktorSavior and Lynx Iuga, with (I believe) an exhibition in the process of being set-up by RoseHanry (just the one image was on display during my two visits).
ViktorSavior has been something of a “featured” artist in these pages of late – for which I make no apologies; I find his work attractive and engaging. Here he presents more of his watercolour paintings, wonderful landscape that involve two of his favourite subjects: water and sky.
Upstairs, Lynx occupies two rooms with his art, a wonderfully broad mix of avatar, animal and landscape studies rich in colour and / or ton,e and beautifully focused on their subjects. They reveal a photographer and artist with an eye for setting and story, and a talent for spotting angles by which to add depth to his images. Just take his picture of a goose standing in a doorway as an example of this: the subject is central to the image, but the angle – shot from behind the goose and at its eye-level – serves to give us an usual perspective on the room beyond while offering an almost first-person perspective on the adventures of our white feathered subject as it venture through a door left ajar.
Elsewhere, the teleport system provides access to a photographic studio with two floors of space for posed photography, complete with lighting, pose and backdrop systems; a BDSM-oriented playroom / photographic area; a video cinema; a “fencing studio” overlooking London’s Houses of Parliament; a sky sphere (“Dome”) in which you can float around in a bubble (rezzer close to the teleport disk -and do allow the local sounds to play music, not the main stream); a second skydome (“Menhirs”) offering a model of Stonehenge in which to relax; and a strange steampunk-like aircraft hanger / workshop being held aloft on the backs of airships.
All of these additional spaces can offer opportunities for photography (as well as for relaxing in the case of the Stonehenge setting and sky sphere), but I admit to being attracted to the hanger setting (“Fly”), if for no other reason than it was such an entirely unexpected find.
Thus, Monocle Man makes for a broad-ranging visit, whether you’re out to view art, create art, display your art or simply explore. Those who are interested in making use of the gallery spaces should contact either Kit or Lynx in-world.
SLurl Details
- Monocle Man Gallery (Flying Fortress, rated Adult)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 