Category: Art in Second Life

Biancajane Juliesse has been involved in art and painting since she was four years old and her mother gave her a paint by numbers oils set. From the start she fell in love with both the smell of the paint and the creative opportunities it presented.

The love affair continues to this day: known in the physical world as Mary Sparrow, Biancajane is a gifted artist whose work has shipped to over 30 countries around the world. Specialising in fine art creating commissioned heirloom portraits for over 25 years, and also works closely with interior designers to create custom artwork for residential and commercial spaces.

While she came to Second Life primarily as a means to relax, she became involved in its creative potential in a number of ways, such as her prefabs and furnishing business in-world, and through the exhibition and sale of prints of her original art.

A selection of that art can now be seen at Sisi Biedermann’s Gallery at an exhibition that officially opens on September 1st, 2021 – although it is open to the public now – and runs through until November 1st. In all, some 20 pieces are presented, the majority of them portraits, although a neat little selection of famous perfume brands is also offered.

The portraits are utterly captivating in their depth and detail. Several of the pieces include the subject’s pets – notably dogs – which adds a further layer of personality to them. As a cat lover, I particularly love the image of a woman in a red evening gown with her long-haired Siamese cat seated on a cushion at her feet. While the woman may be the intended focus of the picture, Biancajane has purrfectly captured the cat’s expression and the fact it knows who the real subject of the picture actually is!

As well as pictures that appear to have been posed, the selection also includes group and individual pictures that have a marvellous sense of immediacy about them, like snapshots that unexpectedly capture a moment of sheer, unstaged joy or a moment where thought distracts the subject, again adding a sense of life and vitality to them.

Rounded out by a portrait of Frida Kahlo, famous for her own portraiture and self-portraits, this is an engaging exhibition, with individual pieces offered for sale. A couple do appear to be mis-labelled, but this is a minor distraction, and while I would have liked to see some of Biancajane’s animal and landscape paintings among the selection (yes, I know, I’m greedy!), this is nevertheless a selection of start that will engage the eye and mind of any patron of the arts in Second Life and is more than worth a visit.

SLurl Details

• Sisi Biedermann Gallery and Garden (Caisteal Maol, rated Moderate)

August 26th, 2021 saw the opening of a joint exhibition at Carelyna’s ArtCare Gallery. featuring the work of two very different artists whose work nevertheless presents something of a whole when presented side-by-side.

Anja (Neobookie) describes herself as a Second Life photographer who enjoys exploring Second Life and capturing the places she visits – as witnessed with her Flickr stream.  However, as she has demonstrated in recent exhibitions, she has a gift for creating pieces of surrealist art that perfectly encompass the richness of that movement, and at ArtCare she presents six large-format pieces in proof of this.

Each offers a backdrop of a wooden fence in front of which has been strung a washing line, and it is what is on the line that forms the focus of each piece. Offered in vibrant colours, these subject range from surf boards to toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, passing by way of  Minion handbags and melting ice lollies. and more.

These are images that initially appear simple in their presentation, rich in colour but which – for those who look – perhaps offer a little comment on life and living (might Minion Bags, for example a commentary on the drive for us all to conform as best we can to the dictates of  modern consumerism, and Ice Ice Baby a reflection on the passage of time (or the brevity of summer?). But however you take them, there is no mistaking the joy and lightness each piece offers when simply taken in its ability to bring together the ordinary and the extraordinary to create completely something truly unique and engaging.

Therese Carfagno is an artist with an intriguing range of styles and presentation that can encompass real and Second Life photography, her work touching upon abstraction, collage, impressionism, expressionism and more.

The pieces offered at ArtCare very much reflect this richness; they are also offered as “families” or “collections” of themed images, ranging from pairs of pieces through to a quartet entitled Blood. Within them we can find abstraction in the form of Wall, collage in the triple set entitled Sophia and digital overlays with the Sita pairing – and more, including a touch of sensuality a triple set of monochrome pieces. However, the most striking set is that of Blood, a quartet of portraits, again monochrome, that offer a depth of narrative that forces the attention to come back to it over and over.

The contrast between these two small exhibitions couldn’t be stronger in terms of colour: Anja’s works are all vibrantly saturated in their use of colour, their brightness infectious. With the exception of the Wall and Sophia series, Therese’s selection is generally heavier in tone – if not mood;  the colours more muted, and lean more towards monochrome. Individually, they are very different selections, yet together they offer a flow of art and style from one to the other that is impressively engaging.

Needless to say, a visit to this joint exhibition is highly recommended.

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• ArtCare Gallery (Prychek, rated Moderate)

Second Life is awash with opportunities for people to express themselves creatively, be it through talents and skills they bring to the platform from their physical lives, or through the opportunities the platform itself offers for them to discover new avenues through which to express themselves – or indeed, a combination of the two. Through the platform we also have the opportunity to share in people’s creativity and their artistry and even to witness its growth.

This has certainly been the case for those familiar with Fly Kugin (FlyQueen). She first entered Second Life six years ago, and the majority of us were probably none the wiser. However, this changed in 2019 when, as a talented violinist with over 20 years of professional playing throughout her native Turkey and overseas, Fly started performing in Second Life.

In doing so, she quickly and rightly establishing herself as one a highly sought-after musician, with many of her concerts form early 2020 onwards presented through The White Mask Project, specifically established so she could channel the funds raised through such concerts into various charities close to her heart.

As well as bringing her music to Second Life, the platform has encouraged Fly to express herself through other mediums available within it, notably SL photography. She started taking landscape pictures in-world in 2020, teaching herself Photoshop to produce images that carry a the impression of having been painted. From here, either directly or indirectly, she started experimenting with art in the physical world, teaching herself techniques in line art and painting using on-line resources, and over the last several months she has exhibited her work at a number of in-world galleries.

On August 22nd, Fly opened what is her latest – and possibly last, at least for an unspecified period – exhibition at Chuck Clip’s Janus Gallery III at Sinful Retreat. The Falling Leaves is a gorgeous collection of nine watercolour paintings of the leaves (and in three cases the flowers) of various trees and flora.

While the title of the exhibition might remind some of the opening line of Johnny Mercer’s English lyrics for Autumn Leaves, the pieces selected in the exhibition are offered not in memory of a lost love, but as a dedication to the plants and flowers lost during the July / August 2021 wildfires that burnt through 1,600 square kilometres of Turkey’s Mediterranean forest (although given the soulful nature of the tune by Joseph Kosma to which Mercer set his words, it can actually frame the exhibition quite well).

In presenting The Falling Leaves, Fly describes herself as a “beginner” in the subject of painting flora; I’d actually dispute that statement. There is a maturity and grace within these paintings that easily puts them on a level approaching the works by some of the great botanical artists and illustrators; being English, I was almost immediately put in mind of some of Elizabeth Blackwell’s illustrations found in her A Curious Herbal, (without the associated medical connotations, obviously), such is the detail to be found in Fly’s pieces.

The maturity of technique these painting is made all the more attractive when one considers Fly only started experimenting with watercolours in June 2021. In fact, The Falling Leaves is her first exhibition of her watercolour paintings; a fact that makes the exhibition a bittersweet experience, given it is unclear when (or even possibly if) she will be exhibiting in-world again.

Given that there may not be another opportunity to view exhibitions by Fly after The Falling Leaves closes on September 22nd, 2021, I urge all lovers of art in SL to hop along to Sinful Retreat and visit the Janus Gallery III between now and then and share in these pieces.

SLurl Details

• Janus Gallery III (Sinful Retreat, rated Adult)

I recently received invitations to visit two exhibitions within Second Life which although unrelated in concept or core themes, are nevertheless linked by genre and technique, both utilising aspects of abstractism in their presentation. Given this, I’ve opted to offer thoughts on both exhibitions through a single article and hope that it will tweak curiosities sufficiently for readers to visit both exhibitions.

Matt Thompson (MTH63) in some ways needs no introduction here; I’ve covered his art on a number of occasions and have appreciated seeing the focus of his work in-world shift. Having built a strong reputation as a Second Life landscape photographer, Matt has, over his last several exhibitions, taken the opportunity to show his physical world art through the platform.

So far as I’m aware (and thus subject to correction on this), the majority of these latter exhibitions have been ensemble in nature, Matt sharing the space with a number number of other artists. However, with Abstractia Hugs the Countryside, which opened on on August 15th at Raging Graphix Gallery, owned and operated by Liv (Raging Bellls), his work takes centre-stage in a vibrant pieces that are largely abstract in nature, each of which has its own story to tell.

Rich in colour, largely vibrant in tone, Abstratica presents pieces that range of pure abstract expressionism (Zoom Boom, The One and Only the Brain Knows  through Yea Blah Blah), mixed with a degree of abstract impressionism (The Dangerous Solo Thought and Gateway to Oblivion) to even touch on Fauvism (Get a Tan You Said). The one exception to this is Faith Hope and Charity, a piece that carries a marvellous sense of etched realism even (conversely) though it appears to have its origins from within Second Life.

Each piece, combined with its title, gently marshals thought and perception to bring forth narratives that are as wide-ranging as the colours and tones used within each piece. As well as the inkling of a tale, these are pieces which can contain other elements – touches of Matt’s humour for example, which reveal him as an artist who is confident in his work but not in any way conceited about it; others perhaps have a subtle message within them, rather than narrative per se. Again, take Get a Tan You Said again, is there not a comment on global warming sitting within it? Thus, Abstractia stands as an engaging and layered exhibition.

Hailing from India, Neil (lo01ner01) has been active in Second Life since mid-2017, and at Les Halles de Paris Gallery, owned by Darcy Mokeev he offers a collection of images under the title TATHASTH: a monologue, a collection of 28 abstract images in which one might discern multiple narratives that stand both within single pictures and which may also appear to link some of them in theme.

Neil informs us that tathasth is a Hindu word “which speaks of standing back and calmly observing everything with love and detachment” – which very much speaks to Neil’s general approach to his art, and which here offers a frame in which the 28 images are set. All of them are numbered, and to get the fullest sense of flow between them, I strongly recommend taking the note card from the exhibition’s title easels and then viewing the images in their numbered order around the lower floor and then the upper.

On the lower floor are pieces that might be seen as a mix of abstract expressionism and abstract impressionism, their tones and colouring strongly suggestive of mood and emotion. Several of these perhaps most clearly have the sense of narrative running through them, one to the next. The upper level offers pieces that are more abstracted in nature, but which share that sense of mood / emotion through the use of colour.

Tonally, these are “darker” pieces that those offered by Matt in his exhibition – but that doesn’t necessarily translate to dark or brooding moods throughout TATHASTH: a monologue. Rather, what is presented might be be summed up as perceptions of the the physical world (good and bad), as rendered through the filter of the subconscious, something which suggests that whilst abstract in form, these pieces are the product of automatism, rather than directed thought, further adding to their depth.

Abtractia and TAHASTH are, as noted, two very different exhibitions, but between them they demonstrate the richness of expression that artists can use through a chosen genre, particularly one as richly branched as abstractionism. Both are well worth the time taken to visit them, whether you chose to do so individually, or take the time to visit them one after the other.

My thanks to Fen (Fenrue) for pointing out Neil’s exhibition at Les Halles de Paris to me. 

SLurl Details

• Abstractia Hugs the Countryside – Raging Graphix Gallery (Heatherwood, rated Moderate)
• TATHASTH: a monologue – Les Halles de Paris Gallery (Paris 2000, rated Moderate)