Category: Art in Second Life

Cica’s Fairy Tale in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost – Fairy Tale

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again,” so reads the quote from C.S. Lewis which Cica has selected for her latest installation, Fairy Tale, which opened on August 29th, 2017. It’s part of a dedication he gave to his God-daughter after writing The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. While Cica assures me she wasn’t aware of the full dedication when picking the quote, it is nevertheless the most salient part of Lewis’ comment – and fits this installation perfectly.

Across an undulating landscape, columns of rocks stack their way into the sky, vying with denuded trees and the surrounding hills for height. Only one of the hills is topped in grass – the rest of the land appears hard and dry. Reached by a set of steps formed by more rocks, it is home to a little red house sitting in a tiny garden. A plethora of cats occupy the house, most taken by the bed sitting towards one end of the single room, although one is attentive to the young woman who also stands inside the house.

Cica Ghost – Fairy Tale

The hill looks across the region, over the stacks of rocks, the trees and a group of standing stones to where three dragons proudly sit, surveying the world around them. One, perched high on a shelf of rock, is winged. “He’s the male,” Cica told me as we chatted about the build. “The other two without wings are female.”

One of the latter seems to have wandered a little from her nest, where patterned eggs awaiting hatching. another nest lies in a hollow of the ground a little further away. The second female offers a clue to the shell-like objects also scattered across the landscape. She is sitting on top of one, as if claiming it. “The dragons use the shells as caves,” Cica said. “They live in them!”

Cica Ghost – Fairy Tale

Scattered throughout the setting are sitting points, some with the addition of dances and other animations. Check the tops of some of the rock stacks and the little – but tall – island lying just off-shore as well in order to find them. All offer views out over this region and the opportunity to cam around or take photos.

Fairy Tale is another whimsical  installation from Cica. It is also a curio: just what do we make of it as we travel through it? What should we make of the dragons’ use of giant shells, and what of the original occupants of the shells? Where does the woman and her cats in the house fit within all this?

Cica Ghost – Fairy Tale

The clue to these and other questions lies best in the quote from C.S. Lewis: we are all enthralled with tales that give flight for the imagination, but somewhere along life’s path, we often lose the will to use our imaginations as fully as we might. Fairy Tale is perhaps presents a chance to recapture that willingness, to let out imaginations roams across this landscape as freely as our feet, and let imagination fill-in the blanks of the story.

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An Inner Journey in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Inner Journey

“You will not find art in this exhibition,” Marie (mariajo60), aka Pepa Cometa, states disarmingly of her exhibition, Inner Journey, now open at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery. She claims she is not an artist, but rather regards herself as a traveller, a witness to all that is to be found in Second Life.

On the strength of Inner Journey, I have to say that I disagree with Pepa’s assessment of herself as an artist. The twelve images she has selected for display at Nitroglobus are most assuredly artistic. Entirely “raw” shots of Second Life, they are entirely without cropping or post-processing: they are presented precisely as Pepa sees the scenes on her screen. As such, they are beautifully framed and composed.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Inner Journey

The images present something of a personal view of Second Life, and the fact the images haven’t been additionally processed deepens their personal nature and attractiveness. There is also an air of melancholy  – or at least of introspection – within many of the pictures. This is particularly evident in Life Revolves, Rain in My Fairy Tale, Furillen in Blue, The Windows of My Kingdom, Hey You – the One in the Box. and, perhaps, Wet Sand. Others among the set suggest love, innocence, and perhaps childhood memories.

Each of these images conveys a story. Obviously, each story is personal to Pepa – but so too does each speak to visitors. This is another marvellous exhibition, one in which it is a delight to spend time at, savouring each of the images. Kudos to both Pepa and Dido.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Inner Journey

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Kultivate’s Black and White exhibition in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kultivate Black and White

Opening on Sunday, August 27th and running through until Sunday, September 3rd is the last of the Kultivate event exhibitions for 2017.

The Black and White Exhibition features over 40 artists are showcasing some of their best black and white imagery! The event will also feature live performers and a special hunt, plus a Black and White masquerade event.

Hana Hoobinoo at Black and White

The artists participating in the exhibition are: Anouk Lefavre, bluesrocker, Booyakashaka Resident, ByrneDarkly Cazalet, Caingrovesnore751, demonista, Callipygian Christensen, Catalina Staheli, Char6666, Christian Ayden, Coltonvond Resident, Daruma Boa, DrusillaGwind Resident, Eleseren Brianna, Elle Thorkveld, emberdearheart, Eucalyptus Carroll, FreeDom Voix, GlitterPrincess Destiny, Grazietta Cazenove, Hana Hoobinoo, Hikaru Enimo and Marcusgay Lefevre, Karma Daxeline, John Brianna, ilyra chardin, Inara Pey, iSkye Silverweb, IthilwenRose Resident, jaime poutine, Kaijah Chrome, KodyMeyers Resident, Kylie Sabra, Lanne Wise, Lusus Saule, Myra Wildmist, Paradox Messmer, retroye resident, roxaane Fyanucci, Sheba Blitz, Slatan Dryke, Storm Blauvelt, Tayren Theas, Tiszo cioc, Veruca Tammas, and Vivienne Darcy.

Event Schedule

All times SLT.

  • Sunday, August 27th, 2017, 04:00:
    • Exhibition Area Opens to the Public.
    • Yīnyáng Hunt Begins – scattered throughout the grounds are 20 yīnyáng symbols. Touch them all and win a free prize-if you can find them all.
  • Sunday, August 27th, 16:00: Live Performer Parker Static.
  • Tuesday, August 29th, 2017, 16:00: Live Performer Lark Bowen.
  • Wednesday, August 30th, 2017, 16:00: Live Performer Dimi Van Ludwig.
  • Thursday, August 31st, 2017, 16:00: Live Performer AM Forte.
  • Friday, September 1st, 2017, 16:00 Live Performer J Lively.
  • Saturday, September 2, 2017, time TBC: Live Performer Loreen Legeion
  • Sunday, September 3rd, 2017:
  • 13:00: Live Performer Melenda Mikael
  • 23:59: Exhibition Area Closes to the Public and Yīnyáng Hunt Ends.
My own efforts at Black and White

Note that the SLurl to the event will only be available when the exhibition opens at 04:00 SLT on Sunday, August 27th, 2017.

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A return to the Art of Nature in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Art by Nature

Ani (Anibrm Jung), who is an award-winning photographer in the physical world and who has been active in Second Life since 2006, recently opened a new gallery space at Gallery Graine and the Riverside Café.

Based in the Netherlands, Ani specialises in photographing nature. She captures many of her images in her own garden using only her camera and natural light; everything is framed directly through the viewfinder, and no cropping nor image manipulation is used after the fact. In this way, we are able to see each picture exactly as she did when taking it, allowing us to share her own sense of closeness with her subjects.

Art by Nature

Art by Nature, the name of her gallery space, demonstrates this in a powerful tour-de-force  of her work, spread across two floors of the gallery space. Offering a combination of macro images, wildlife studies and landscape and coastal studies, the gallery makes for an engaging visit.

I’ve long been fascinated by Ani’s work – there are times when art and photography from the physical world perhaps doesn’t gain the recognition it deserves in Second Life. Ani’s photography should persuade those who feel physical world art doesn’t work in-world otherwise. Superlatives such as “magnificent”, “beautiful” and more really don’t measure up to the images Ani has brought in-world. Her composition is – to use another superlative – exquisite; these are pictures that would grace any home – digital of physical.

Art by Nature

Were I asked to pick any particular pieces of Ani’s work, I’d honestly be hard put. However, her pictures of cats and ducks (seen in the middle image of this article),  are especially endearing and – having cats of my own – I repeatedly found myself drawn back to them in particular. But that said, all of the pieces on display are fully deserving appreciation – and purchase for those so minded.

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  • Art by Nature, Gallery Graine and the Riverside Cafe (Blue Curacao, rated: Moderate)

Selfies and an exhibition in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Club LA and Gallery: Burke Bode

Club LA and Gallery, curated by Fuyuko ‘冬子’ Amano (Wintergeist) has a new ground-level location, which is still partially under construction. To celebrate the move, the gallery is hosting two exhibitions; the first, Selfies: Some of My Faces, by Burke Bode, has been open since July; the second, An Exhibition by Twain Orfan, opens on Sunday, August 20th.

“Pablo Picasso said ‘Everything you can imagine is real,'” Burke says of his exhibition. “He is right. Living in a world that is completely created from scratch just by the imagination of its residents you experience this. A place where you can invent yourself new every day and for a creative person a place where you MUST create yourself new every single day. [I’m] changing my look constantly as shape shifter. Some of my shapes last for a day, for one picture; and some stay.”

Club LA and Gallery: Burke Bode

He reflects this beautifully with an exhibition of images illustrating many of his various looks. These are presented in an enclosed space within the gallery, the images laid out to present something of a maze visitors walk through. Semi-translucent, the images resemble layers visible one through another so that as you walk through them, each appears to be peeled away, revealing the next, which is in turn peeled back at the next turn, and so on.

It’s both an artistic approach to presenting change and the possibilities to reinvent within the digital medium, and an intriguing means of commenting on the nature of identity and how we present ourselves in the physical world. While we may not be able to change our looks here, we do “change” according to circumstance, situation and those around us: the person we are with a lover is not the same as the person we are with a child; the person we present to colleagues at work is not the same as the one we share with our closest friends, and so on. Thus, Selfies might be seen as a reflection of this.

Club LA and Gallery: Twain Orfan

Twain Orfan his been active in Second Life for over eight years, but only immersed himself in the world of SL photography in 2016. “I enjoy taking photo [the] art of items that are often overlooked when photographers visit various sims,” he says of his work. “Finding pure art in objects such as a chair, a table, a flower-pot, or, perhaps a bicycle. From time to time I also try my hand at Landscapes, or an occasional shot involving my own avatar.”

An Exhibition reflects all of this with a collection of 18 images taken from around second life, all of which also demonstrate Twain’s interest in, and experiment with, angle, light and shadow. What is particularly fascinating with the images is the fact they are all raw: Twain resists the use of GIMP or Photoshop for post-processing, relying instead purely on the viewer and Windlight for his pictures. The result is a fascinating collection of pieces which are individual and collectively eye-catching, offering unique windows into our virtual lives.

Club LA and Gallery: Twain Orfan

Both Selfies: Some of My Faces and An Exhibition make for an engaging visit, with the latter officially opening at 12:00 noon on Sunday, August 20th, with music by Marain Dufaux.

The new gallery space itself offers more room for exhibitions, and includes a landscaped garden visitors can enjoy and an information centre / studio space. Teleport disks are provided to assist visitors in getting around – although in truth, everything at ground level is within easy walking distance of the landing point.

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No Life Without Art in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
No Life Without Art: Kandinsky

“My passion for art has been part of my virtual life from the start, and in RL began many years ago,” Alo (Aloisio Congrejo) says of himself. “As an artistic ‘consumer’ there have been many artists both great and lesser known that I have followed and admired, but what is most important to me is to see the work of anyone who can craft various media in such a way as to express their feelings.”

Thus it is that for his latest exhibition, No Life Without Art, he uses his own artistic expressionism to celebrate some of the most influential artists of the early 20th century – Wassily Kandinsky, credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works; Paul Klee, whose unique approach to art drew upon abstraction, cubism, expressionism and surrealism and surrealists Joan Miró, René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico.

No Life Without Art: Giorgio de Chirico

A visit to the installation begins on a platform overlooking a 3D tribute to Kandinsky with a piece that – for me at least – echoes his Small World pieces, produced in the 1920s when teaching at the Bauhaus in Berlin. This part of the installation is perhaps best viewed from above and by camming, although there is a walkway leading down to it for those who wish to explore more closely.

Beneath this, and reached via teleport board at the landing point sit the tributes to Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte. In the early years of the 20th century, de Chirico founded the scuola metafisica metaphysical art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. Featuring dream-like scenes offering strong contrasts in light and shadow and often with an undertone of mystery or threat, the movement flourished through the second decade of the 20th Century and is notable commemorated in this installation through the inclusion of a representation of The Disquieting Muses (circa 1917) and what might be a play on The Seer (circa 1914/15), together with architecture and backgrounds reflecting those seen in many of de Chirico’s works from this period.

No Life Without Art: René Magritte

Set across three platforms linked by walkways, the de Chirico pieces overlook a wall of identical pieces which offer a play on Magritte’s 1964 composition The Son Of Man and which also might be said it echo his 1966 piece, The Pilgrim. These form a link with the lowest level, where the artists is again celebrated, with another image of a faceless man, together with that of an apple, which for Magritte symbolised the tension between the hidden and visible.  Both of these images are also symbolic for the artist’s influence on the pop, minimalist and conceptual art movements, whilst also offering a tip of the hat towards his own playful use of art.

This level also celebrates Joan Miró and Paul Klee, with the latter’s highly individualistic style very well represented through a reproduction of his 1922 composition, Red Balloon, and a 3D representation of Flagged Pavilion (1927), while Miro is represented by his 1925 work, The Garden.

No Life Without Art: Paul Klee

All five artists are well represented, and Alo also provides biographical note cards on each, allowing visitors to gain a greater understanding of their lives and works. In introducing himself, Alo notes that he appreciates those who can express their feelings through their art. In No Life Without Art, he clearly reveals his own depth of feeling for, and admiration of, these five influential and provocative artists.

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