Monroe Snook has a new home for her art, courtesy of Milly Sharple. Called the Art Bistro, it offers an impressive insight into Monroe’s art, both from the physical world and from within SL.
Art expression for me is in the experience of the creative process. The thrill of a piece as it unveils itself as I work. The process can be slow and tedious or a quick snap. The work is in command – I am but its servant.
Monroe’s physical art is a fascinating blend of nature and abstract; wonderful plant-like creations, some mindful of sea anemones or even triffids, others organic forms of fractal images. There is a rich vibrancy on the use of colours in these images that adds depth to the feeling they are each alive, whether plant-like in form or more crustacean in shape and feel.
Within her photography, Monroe demonstrates an equally rich ability to present mood or narrative – so much so, that I actually regretted finding three example of her photographic work on display in the gallery space.
Art expression for the viewer is in the interaction with the completed work. Spend time to get to know a work. Make [it] yours. Listen to its song.
This is a selection of pieces that also demonstrate the richness of Monroe’s approach to her art: and approach that encompasses paints and brushes, scans of objects, original sketches, digital art tools such as fractal generation programs and tools like Photoshop.
All told, a welcome return to exhibiting her art from a talented artist.
Wintertime in the northern hemisphere is when thoughts turn to snow and holidays, and within Second Life, this is no exception. Many regions take on a winter look and feel, the ground, trees and buildings caught under white blankets or dusted with snow, even as more often falls from the sky. For many in the physical world, despite the cold, it is a time of joy and for treks through virgin drifts of snow or – in the case of the younger at heart snow fairies, snowmen and sledges and sleighs.
Celebrating this time of year is not new; people have always found enjoyment with winter and the changes it brings to the world, and right now we can witness this for ourselves at a recently opened exhibition of art at The Vordun Museum and Gallery, created and curated by Jake Vordun.
Entitled Frost: Visions of Winter, it offers selected reproductions of classical pieces of art spanning 500 years, celebrating winter in all its glory, as the introductory notes explain:
In this exhibition, you will see twenty painting, drawings, prints and manuscripts depicting different aspects of the season. Be it landscapes, winter costumes or feasts by the fire, these pieces will show you glimpses of winter from the 15th century to the 20th.
The Vordun has a reputation – thoroughly deserved – for bringing high-quality reproductions of physical world art, properly licensed, into Second Life. This exhibition, located in the gallery’s rearmost hall, is no exception. Including paintings and drawings by the likes of Francesc Masriera i Manovens, Jacob van Ruisdael, Sebastiaan Vrancx, Claude Monet, Jean-Baptiste Pater, Francis Wheatley and Hendrick Avercamp, this might at first be considered a wholly European view of winter – but not so; America is represented via James Abbott McNeill Whistler, as is China through the ink on paper Winter Forest in Flying Snow by Wen Zhengming, with Scandinavian artists also being present among the images.
I really cannot stress the quality of these pieces, which together with the environment in which they are set. As I noted when it first opened in July 2016, The Vordun beautifully recreates the experience of visiting a physical world art gallery – so much so that it one of the those select Second Life experiences that leaves me regretting we cannot have fully immersive virtual reality in Second Life. Certainly, for those building in Sansar, it is perhaps the model of how to plan and build a virtual gallery space.
This is not only because of the look and feel of The Vordun, but in the way Jake has developed a visit as a Second Life experience in the technical sense of the word, presenting visitors with the opportunity to view the works in the main hall exhibition of European Masters: 300 Years of Painting as immersively as possible, via scripted camera control and the use of both voice and text to impart information on each piece on display.
Sadly, this aspect of The Vordun doesn’t extend into Frost: Visions of Winter, but that is not to say the latter is lessened in any way; rather the reverse. Frost stands as a captivating exhibition in its own right, while for those who haven’t visited The Vordun before, the presentation of European Masters: 300 Years of Painting, makes a visit to the gallery doubly worthwhile – and also gives the opportunity to appreciate two other long-running exhibitions there: Pictures of the Floating World and Dutch Proverbs (both of which you can read about here), which are as equally stunning as Frost and European Masters, and sample Postcrossing, a celebration of the website of the same name and the use of postcards to bring half a million people around the world a little closer together.
Sisi Biedermann is a prolific and exceptionally talented artist. Her work is quite unlike art produced within Second Life or uploaded and exhibited in-world. In a sense, thanks to Sisi’s imagination, style, and rich use of colour and ideas, to me it straddles the two. So many of her pieces could depict settings and situations waiting to be created in-world, whilst all offer doorways into fantastical worlds that come to life as virtual places within our imaginations.
As I’ve noted before, Sisi’s work is broad-ranging and so skilfully executed, it is possible to become lost in her techniques (which, I’d hazard a guess mix both traditional and digital approaches), so I was delighted when Caitlyn and I had the opportunity to visit Sisi’s gallery in-world to view some of her most recent work, which went on display at the start of November 2018.
Sisi notes her art and her time in Second Life are closely intertwined, and not just because of the numerous exhibitions in which she participates:
I joined Second Life in 2007, and back then I never realized how much this would mean to me. I started taking photos in Second Life in 2008, and have developed my style ever since.
Back then I had just started painting with acrylics after a very long break where I raised my children and looked after my family and my work. Today, I have painted several hundred paintings, and I still get a lot of inspiration from nature, second Life and northern islands such as Faroe Islands and Iceland.
All this brings me to where I am today and I hope you will enjoy my pictures.
On offer at the gallery are around 50 of Sisi’s paintings, each one of them stunning in their colours, composition and presentation. Where a number of her recent exhibition have perhaps leaned towards her animal and wildlife images, this collection focuses more on her fantasy work and human studies, touched with elements of the mystic and science fiction in places.
Every single piece on offer is testament to Sisi’s skill; each one unique and captivating. So much so, that picking out a single piece from this collection is unfair; but I admit there is one piece in particular that completely took away my breath.
Perfectly placed on the upper floor stairwell, and passing unseen until visitors make their return journey to the lower levels, is The Evil Wizard, and it is quite the most stunning painting of the late Heath Ledger in what was perhaps his most remembered role: that of The Joker in The Dark Knight. The positioning of this piece means that you cannot fail to immediately be mesmerised by such a captivating image of Ledger as The Joker.
It’s been nigh on a year since my last review of an exhibition at Blue Orange gallery, the music and arts venue in Second Life curated by Ini (In Inaka). Part of the reason for this was that the last exhibition at gallery I covered seemed to be drawn out over an extended period, and then the gallery was reported as being closed for re-building. However, I hopped over recently out of curiosity to find it once again open for business – and the rebuild has left a visit feeling less like a trip to a gallery and more of an adventure of discovery.
The familiar subway landing point is still present – but now with a second platform on the far side of the track, the first indication of changes as ghostly trains roar between the tunnels at either end of the station. The familiar music venue lies at the end of the tiled hall leading away from the platform, a hall displaying images by various photographers taken whilst visiting Blue Orange.
From here – or earlier, if you opt to walk along the platform to the doors labelled Art Corner – the adventure begins, as the Art Corner can be accessed via a hole in the wall of the club. This route leads visitors first to the Library. Inspired by The Colour of Pomegranates, a 1969 Soviet arts film directed by Sergei Parajanov, this is a surreal place with unfinished walls, against which books are pinned, with more floating in the air. Each book offers a web link to a writer or poet’s website where the given story or poem can be enjoyed.
Beyond this lies an assortment of halls, some connected directly to one another, others reached via doors or through connecting passages (including the second platform), still others reached via stairs and ladders or by actively jumping down well-like holes. Within each of these spaces art can be found.
Finding your way around the art spaces is, as noted, something of an adventure; confusing in places (are you supposed to go through the blue door and then drop down to a space apparently between the exhibition halls?), but definitely worth the time taken to explore and discover.
I’m not sure if the gallery will feature a changing roster artists, or whether some of the halls are intended to offer permanent spaces in which artists-in-residence will offer different exhibitions of their work – Bryn Oh’s space, for example, now appears to be a permanent fixture within Blue Orange.
However, such questions are secondary to the time spent in explorations here: the art is rich and diverse, and the nature of the gallery’s halls means that each corner or stair can lead to a pleasing discovery for any lover of art in Second Life. However, when visiting do make sure you have enabled Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) on your viewer (Preferences > Graphics), in order to ensure you see all of the art as intended.
Currently open to visitors at the University of Texas, San Antonio ArtSpace gallery in Second Life is Behind the Avatar, an exhibition of the photography of Paola Mills. To be honest, it’s an exhibition I almost completely missed, the notification having escaped my attention back in September – so my apologies to Paola.
This is a small, but emotive display of work, focused on avatar studies, and which – as the title of the exhibition suggests – offers a glimpse of the person behind the camera and the avatar.
Hello I’m Angela Paola and in pixel version I’m Paola Mills.
I signed up to Second life in 2007, after hearing a lot of Linden Lab in the media, I did not like the name Second Life, but its potential as a platform to use, because I am passionate about video games since I was a girl. Reading an article in the American Journal, I realised that Second Life was something else, it is a place used to pleasure doing business, others see it as financial speculation, for other people it’s just a 3D chat. But soon it became a niche for lovers of creativity.
Paola notes that while she isn’t a professional photographer, she always carries a small camera with her when out and about in the physical world, taking pictures of the people and things that capture her attention. In entering Second Life, she found a way to expand her photographic creativity, using the viewer’s snapshot capability to capture moods, as well as moments, and give lasting expression to the emotions she might feel at any given time.
It is precisely this emotional amplification of mood and emotion that is represented in the 12 images offered at the ArtSpace Gallery. All 12 are deeply expressive and / or representative of a mood – contemplation, reflection, hurt, fascination, and more, with the nature of the form used – human or robotic – used to present the mood and, with at least some of the images, offer up an additional narrative.
Paola notes that unlike many SL photographers, she makes minimal use of post-process editing. while she states this is more down to an inability to use such applications (when it comes to PhotoShop, I know exactly how she feels!), rather than a conscious decision. However, rather than detracting from her work, I would actually say this adds to it, drawing the audience into each of the images as they are: moments (and emotions) caught in that instant of time, without later embellishment or alteration.
Cica Ghost sent me an invitation to visit her latest installation in Second Life, which opened on Sunday, November 4th, 2018. Rusty is another of Cica’s more quirky builds, a strange post-industrial landscape looking like a little town and dominated y some strange machines.
Cica sums the installation up with a quote by Joseph Addison, the 18th Century English essayist, poet, playwright, politician, and co-founder of The Spectator magazine: Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. While Addison, the son of a Church of England clergyman, was referring to the act of going to church – noting that it both refreshes people’s thinking around God and gets them looking their best in their Sunday finery – Cica offers no such religious connotations with Rusty.
Instead she offers a single suggestion: “have fun!” It’s an idea that’s also well suited to a Sunday, but which applies equally well whenever you opt to visit Rusty, because this is a place where there is a lot to do, besides wandering around.
Given the name of the installation, it should come as no surprise that rust features heavily here; it can be found on almost every surface – sometimes to the degree that you might think that simply tapping a drum or tower or metal line could result in all or part of what you touched vanishing a cloud of rusty dust and falling debris. The structures themselves are many and varied – from chimney-like stacks to metal prams travelling along old metal tent spikes strung together to form cables. Part of some might resemble old watering cans, others strange kettles with upturned spouts. Some even has a decidedly anthropomorphic look about them.
To the east of the region, for example, a series of ladders rise against some of these strange structures, one of which, with its large rotating wheels set either side of a hook-like bill, looking from a distance like some weird metal flamingo. More to the centre of the region is a very definite rooster, also offering a place to sit.
There are also metal creatures to be found here, from the massive wheeled (and ridable) cat near the landing point (if it is not already rolling around the region, jump up on its back and touch its tail light to start moving), to an odd metal spider, or the mouse also out on the water, well away from its cousin on dry land.
The “Flamingo” is linked to a neighbouring tower by means of a metal plank. Those wishing to do so can obtain a pair of boxing gloves at either tower and join in a game of Plank Boxing. Elsewhere are plenty of places to sit and watch others come and go, while a tall building offers the only place where machinery largely unaffected by rust can be found. Could it be responsible for keeping the place running?
Filled with Cica’s familiar motifs, Rusty is another whimsical installation that will remain open until the end of the month.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 