Category: Art in Second Life

Bellisseria’s Limoncello Art Gallery in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Limoncello Art Gallery

As I’ve noted a few times in these pages, Bellisseria, the Linden Home continent, provides space not only for people to live and form communities, but also to express themselves and the creativity present in-world and through people’s talents. One of the key ways this is done is though residents in the continent given their homes over for the display of art – their own, the pieces they’ve purchased and / or the works of others they invite to exhibit.

One of the Bellisseria galleries I’ve only recently become aware of  – and my thanks to curator Fenella Allen for IMing me – is that of Limoncello Art Gallery.

While perhaps new to Bellisseria (given the continent itself is just over a year old!), this is a gallery with a long history. Originally founded by LastDitch Writer, the gallery existed in a 120-metre long airship hovering over the Mainland region of Nanga, and was home to his personal collection of art, both 2D and 3D.

Limoncello Art Gallery

The space available at Bellisseria is obviously a lot smaller that a 120 metre airship, but Lord Junibalya, who now looks after the collection, has provided a skybox for the art that forms a 2-storey gallery with a fair amount of room for pieces to be displayed – and there is a lot to see!

There is a lean towards art from the physical world – paintings, drawings, portraits, abstracts – but Second Life avatar studies are also well represented, while the upper level floor space lends itself to 3D pieces by Toysoldier Thor and Mistero Hifeng. Other artists represented in the collection whose names are likely to be recognised include Gitu Aura, Dido Haas, Carelyna, JMB Balogh, In Inaka, Audie Whimsy, Wyald Wooley and Asmita Duranjaya, to name a handful.

Limoncello Art Gallery

Given these pieces are from a private collection, none are directly offered for sale. However it might be possible to purchase a copy of some pieces by contacting the artist directly (but please keep in mind that not all of the artists represented in the gallery may still be active in-world).

An impressive collection offering a lot to appreciate, the compact size of the parcel notwithstanding, Limoncello Art Gallery is well worth the visit for any patron of the arts in Second Life. My thanks again to Fenella for contacting me about it.

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Tranquil Droplets at Nitroglobus in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus: Bamboo Barnes – Traquil Droplets

Opening on Monday, June 8th, 2020 at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated by Dido Haas, is Tranquil Droplets, an exhibition of art by Bamboo Barnes.

There can be few involved in the art world within Second Life who can be unfamiliar with Bamboo’s work; it is by turns vibrant, evocative, provocative, emotive and so often rich in narrative. A physical world artist hailing from Japan, Bamboo works with digital tools to produce her pieces, her finished works strongly assertive in terms of its presentation, ability to dominate the space it occupies and in the way it demands the attention of the eye and mind.

Nitroglobus: Bamboo Barnes – Tranquil Droplets
There’s hopeless life still seeking for hopes like abandoned walking shadows of people on the street, my artworks are expression of confusion of life, darkness of light and strangeness of love. I create what I see but maybe you won’t, they are about people’s reality and mind.

– Bamboo Barnes, discussing her work

Much of her works is produced entirely outside of Second Life, which presents itself – along with Flickr – as a means for Bamboo to reach her audience. Which is not to say the pieces offered in Tranquil Droplets originated beyond our digital realm; rather the reverse, in fact, as the focus here is very much on avatar faces.

Not that the pieces offered are in any way a “traditional” avatar portrait / study; far from it. Each is presented in Bamboo’s rich, evocative style such that her use of colour, digital highlighting and layering all serve to add depth to the portraits offered. This gives each piece a life of its own, an expressive richness that presents us with a sense of story.

Nitroglobus: Bamboo Barnes – Traquil Droplets

For Bamboo, emotions are a core element of her art, be they those that are invoked by the piece she is working on; those she felt at the time she started working, and / or those evoked by the music she is listening to, as well as those she sees within her subject.

All of this is strongly evident within the 17 pieces offered within Traquil Droplets, each one of which offers unique reflections of both her subjects and of various artistic techniques – abstract, modernist, hints of dadaism / collages, and impressionism, all without ever merely mimicking these styles.

Nitroglobus: Bamboo Barnes – Tranquil Droplets

As Bamboo says, these pieces are like water whose dripping echoes in the silence; once heard, it cannot easily be forgotten, except here, it is that each of these images that continue to live with the imagination long after they’ve been seen, because of their richness of colour, presentation and emotion. In other words, this is a captivating exhibition.

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Raging Graphix Gallery: Etamae and I

Posted on by Inara Pey
Raging Graphix Gallery

Opening on Saturday, June 6th, 2020 at Raging Bellls’ Raging Graphix Gallery is an exhibition that I’m both delighted and honoured to be sharing with the extraordinary talent of Etamae, and which is entitled A Celebration of the Arts, but which might also have be called The Brits Are Coming!, as Etamae – Eta to her friends – also hails from the UK 🙂 .

In truth, Eta is an extraordinary digital artist. her work, whether landscape or avatar  is both unique and distinctive in its presentation. Using digital technique and Second Life capabilities such as Advanced Lighting, Eta never fails to produce utterly captivating pieces that never fail to hold the eye.

Raging Graphix Gallery: Etamae

My photography and art is exclusive to SL, taken from the things she has seen and loved which have inspired her to transform them into something else – not more, nor better – simply different. As an avid SL traveller, I truly enjoy the inventiveness our double click world inspires.

Mesh creators like Mistero Hfeng, Bryn Oh, Toysoldier Thor, CioTToLiNa Xue, Theda Tammas, Tralala Loordes, Cherry Manga, Meilo Minotaur, Maru Kado, Safar Fiertze, Tansee and Harry Cover to name just a few provide me with subject matter and inspiration, and I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoyed creating it.

– Etamae

Raging Graphix Gallery: Etamae (r) and Yours Truly (l)

For my part, I remain genuinely flattered that people find my work worthy of a focused exhibition. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I don’t regard my images as art, but rather as illustrations for this blog; I don’t pretend to understand anything more than some of the basics of photography, and my post-processing skill – although they have grown somewhat over the years – remain limited when it comes to present any of them as “art”.

The Exhibition space is on the upper floor of the gallery, giving visitors the opportunity to appreciate Raging’s own art on the ground floor, adding a further attraction to any visit.

Raging Graphix Gallery: Yours Truly

The official opening for A Celebration of the Arts is 11:00 SLT on Saturday June 6th, and Eta and I hope you’ll join us. If not, I certainly hope you’ll visit the exhibition during the month it is open; my thanks to Raging for the invitation and opportunity to present at her gallery.

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Raging Graphix Gallery (Heatherwood, rated Moderate)

 

 

 

Art at Love and Love in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Love and love Art Gallery

Love & Love Art Gallery is, for me, a new venue for art in Second Life. Curated by Lylaya Love (lylaya), and co-founded by her and her partner Bohemio Love (Bohemi0), the gallery occupies a pristine 3-storey building set with a 4096 sq metre parcel set out with a small, tidy garden space before it.

At the time of my visit, the ground floor space of the gallery was not in use – I’ve no idea if it will offer future exhibitions – with a teleport offering the way up to the upper two floors.

Love and Love Art Gallery: Cornelia Augusta

On the first of these, Cornelia Augusta (cornelia Longfall) presents Kaleidoscope of Souls, an exhibition of avatar studies across the floor’s two halls and set within an environment that is best appreciated with the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled (Graphics → Preferences → check Advanced Lighting Model if required – note that you do not have to enable Shadows as well, so the rendering impact should hopefully be minimal).

The studies appear to be of Cornelia and her friends / those close to her, and are largely “traditional” in that they offer a head and shoulders view of the subject. They are refreshing in that they appear to have had little or no post-processing. On the one hand, this perhaps means these portraits are not so vibrantly life-like as avatar studies produced by others: skin toning may not appear to be flesh-like, features have not been re-touched or enhanced to add further “humanness” before the avatar’s natural look, etc.

Love and Love Art Gallery: Cornelia Augusta

However, on the other hand, they allow us to see the avatars as they are, something that imbues them with their own distinct life, rather than being seen as an image attempting to mimic life. Thus, it is possible to discern within them more of their own nature mixed with the nature of their creators, rather than seeing an interpretation of that mix of natures as perceived by the artist as a result of extensive re-editing.

On the upper floor is an exhibition of physical world paintings by Oblomov (Jos Bookmite) entitled Pesci (Fishes).

Love and Love Art Family: Oblomov

As the name implies, the paintings here are very much about fishes – although they are not all piscine in nature; there are also molluscs, sea-snails and mermaids waiting to be seen. Set within an environment suggestive of the sea floor, these are highly stylised sea creatures, some of which clearly have a life of their own waiting to be found in their expressive forms / faces suggestive of a range of emotions, with some of the fish looking very human in their expressions.

Colourful, happy, mischievous, and in places, slightly sinister, these paintings all have their own stories waiting to be discerned by visitors.

Love and Love Art Family: Oblomov

Two very different art displays within a single gallery space, joined by their own unique approaches to their subjects, Kaleidoscope of Souls and Pesci are equally enjoyable exhibitions. As they opened in mid-May, I’m not entirely sure how long they will both be around, so do make a point of visiting the gallery sooner rather than later, just in case.

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Sharing FionaFei’s dream in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hannington Endowment for the Arts: FionaFei

FionaFei invited me to visit her new installation that opened on May 29th at the Hannington Endowment for the Arts (HEA). Entitled I Had a Dream, And You Were There, it is a reflection of thoughts and feelings that may come upon us unbidden, be it through dream or through finding an object or hearing a sound or seeing an image or event, that bring to mind someone now gone from our lives.

Set as a dream-like forest, the trees rendered in Fiona’s familiar ink wash black on white, that we’re invited to explore. Within it, the ground is white, as if mist is sliding through the trees, brushed ferns grouping around the base of trunks. Among these trees are park benches offering places to sit in contemplation.

On or near the benches are bright red objects: an alarm clock here, a scarf draped over a branch there, a hat hanging on the back of a bench, a flittering butterfly or two, and so on. All of them are precisely the kind of thing liable to trigger a sudden memory of someone once close to us. Touch them, and they will even offer a specific memory in local chat.

Hannington Endowment for the Arts: FionaFei

For those who have lost someone from their physical or virtual lives, I Had a Dream is liable to be an evocative visit. And by “lost”, I don’t necessarily mean the individual memory recalls has passed away; we lose people from our lives in a wide variety of ways: friendships form and end; closeness fades as physical distance grows; relationships naturally shift in desire, want and need, and so on. Even so, memories of their presence and former closeness can remain with us long after a parting of the ways have come and can – no matter how the parting came about – still come to the fore in the most unexpected ways.

It’s also important not to ascribe the installation to a specific loss on Fiona’s part. As she states in the introduction to the installation:

It is a creative manifestation of thinking about someone and wishing that they were here … The artwork is not about any specific person.

– FionaFei

Hannington Endowment for the Arts: FionaFei

Simply and artistically presented, I Had a Dream… is an installation that can unfold to reveal considerable emotional depth, echoing as it does, feelings that many, if not all of us, have felt in our adult lives.

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Cica’s Elephants in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost: Elephants

Cica Ghost opened her latest installation on Sunday, May 31st, and it is another delight. Entitled Elephants, it offers visitors the opportunity to go on a night-time photo safari to film elephants.

Set on a grassy, somewhat humpy landscape and among trees, these elephants wander, stand or sit individually or in little groups. Whether they are African or Indian is up to personal choice – but the setting does perhaps suggest Africa more than India, particularly given the little huts scattered around the landscape.

Static they may be, but through the simple means of animating their eyes, Cica has imbued them with a remarkable depth of life and emotion that really captivates in the degree of expressiveness offered.

Take the pair who standing close to one another, one with trunk raised. At first they may appear to be going about their own, separate, business and just happen to be in close proximity to one another. Then with a swivel of their eyes, a look passes between them that is hard not to see as a look of of unspoken communication and understanding as might pass between a couple.

Cica Ghost: Elephants

Elsewhere, a lone elephant stands before green plants. From one perspective, it appears sorrowful – perhaps feeling lonely or because it is reflecting the plight of elephants in the physical world; but move your position and await a turn of its eyes, and suddenly you have a shy subject in your camera lens, expressing a coy embarrassment at being photographed – as seen top right of this article.

As usual with Cica’s installations, there are interactive aspects to be found here. Mouse over the elephants (and other points in the setting) and you’ll find sit points, some with single poses, others with multiple poses, allowing visitor to join in with the exhibit.

Cica Ghost: Elephants

There’s really not too much more to say about Elephants, as it should be seen, not described. I will say that it is a genuine tonic for those needing to escape (for a while at least) all the bad news reverberating around the world, and it really cannot fail to raise a smile. For those who wish, one of the little huts offers all of the elephants for sale at very modest prices, making them fitting additions to any art collection.

Definitely not an installation to miss.

Cica’s Elephants – who said an elephant can carry baggage with its trunk?

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