Category: Art in Second Life

An entry in the Destination Guide for the Lyrical Café’s Cultural Centre recently caught my eye, prompting me to slot it into my weekend travels – and it proved to be a more than worthwhile visit, revealing as it did a new centre for arts in SL and the opportunity to chat with the driving force behind it, Mrs. Kamille R. Kamala – LIVE (Kamille Kamala).

Occupying just under one half of a Full region that boasts the private island LI bonus, the setting has been designed by Angela Viera (AngelFruiT) with the assistance of JJ Landar (Jucae). In looks, it might be said to present a West Coast urban vibe with a sub-tropical lean (although the region surround also suggests somewhere more temperate) and which is set under an evening’s sky cut through by the Milky Way (although I opted for more of a daylight EEP for the photos here). Within the provided space can be found a range of facilities that enfold visual arts, literary arts and performance arts and music, all of which are gently mixed within an environment that offers spaces and informal venues that include a beach and spa, that warmly invites exploration.

The main landing point is located alongside the entrance to the Lyrical Café itself, the home of the Lyrical Café Poetry Club founded by Kamille in 2009. This is the location for twice monthly poetry events (2nd and 4th Saturday of the month) that are streamed into the Café as a mix of poetry and music – Kamille is an accomplished poet. Its a place with a sense of intimacy in its décor, one that carries with it a sense of Africa that is both subtle and inviting.

To open a culture and art centre has been a dream I’ve had for years. I would spend time just contemplating it over and over, not really thinking I could pull it off. I had an event in my prior venue, but it got to the point where so many people came, it was too small. Once I realised I needed a bigger place, it gave me the courage to go for my dream.

– Kamille Kamala on the inspiration for the Lyrical Café’s Cultural Centre

Located just inside the entrance to the Café are a couple of teleport stations. The first of these is a wall sign – one of several to be found throughout the setting – that provides ease of access to the major facilities. Simply touch it and accept the local experience to display the TP directory from it and all the other identical signs to be found around the ground-level locations. The second teleport is a floor disk that will carry visitors up to a sample sky home – the region offers four such homes for rent, each with a 500 LI allowance and landscaped grounds, with the rental boxes located in a rear room of the Café.

While it may be tempting to use the venue teleport system, I would urge exploration on foot, as this properly reveals the care with which the Centre has been designed. Two routes of exploration are available from the landing point – through the Café itself and out along the road on the far side, or down the steps immediately behind the landing point.

My recommendation is to take the latter. It goes by way of an open-air performance area to the lower street level. With a broad board walk overlooking the beach, this route provides the most direct access to pedestrianised area that is home to little boutique shops and cafés, water features and four studio spaces available for rent as art galleries or shops, each with a 100LI allowance. Shaded by palm trees and completed by modern art sculptures (which are found throughout the location, further adding to its appeal), this area and the road running parallel to it offer the way to the eastern side of the parcel.

This upper area is home to the venue’s main gallery, dance / ballet centre, night club and gardens. The former are all housed in a series of very modern structures that, together with the palm trees surrounding them, give the strongest sense of West Coast design. They make for a handsome set-up, laid out is such a way that they do not look or feel packed in, despite their relative proximity to one another.

My idea has always been to create a hub of some sort. A studio for the art of dance and music, a gallery to celebrate visual arts , a centre for literary art and so on. Angela made it happen; she took my vision and brought it to reality, and we even included a spa for relaxing, which you might say is part of the art of meditation.

– Kamille Kamala on the Lyrical Café’s Cultural Centre

Currently the gallery is home to a diverse collection of African American art drawn from the physical world, with reproductions of pieces by the likes of Whitney Austin, Elizabeth Catlett, Chuck Styles, Charles White, and more offered for visual appreciation. In the future, the gallery will be host to similar exhibitions of art from the physical world, and also the work of artists active within Second Life, who will have the option of also selling their work if they wish.

Alongside of the gallery, and back-to-back to one another are the dance centre and the Mahogany Club. The latter is a venue for DJ events focused on soul music (dates and times available through the Centre’s in-world group), while the former is named for Misty Copeland,the first African American performer to be appointed as a principal dancer for American Ballet Theatre, and is open to anyone wishing to make use of it, with the barres fully animated.

Facing the entrance to the gallery building is an impressive garden that makes superb and colourful use of the space allotted to it to present a further open-air venue with dance area, a little café of its own, together with a bar space and a little cosy corner neatly tucked away awaiting discovery.

There is a richness to Lyrical Café’s Cultural Centre that goes beyond words. There is a sense of balance through the setting that is genuinely captivating, be it the positioning of buildings and use of space around them, or the depth of greenery that offsets the muted tones of the structures, or the utterly artful use of water throughout in the form of falls, fountains, water walls and natural channels, or the manner in which nature, architecture and 3D all come together as a single entity. As a home for arts, it is truly sublime and richly diverse;  as a statement of art, it is equally exceptional, and I look forward to making many more visits – as I’m sure all patrons of the arts in SL will as well.

SLurl Details

• Lyrical Café’s Cultural Centre (New Paradise rated Moderate)

Currently open at Glinka Gallery, operated and curated by Wolfgang Glinka, are two very different but equally attractive exhibitions, one featuring paintings and images, and the other focused on words and poetry.

Combined Technique presents a selection of art by Serbian painter and digital artist, Lash VV. Having opened on March 22nd, 2021, it is another enticing series of pieces the combine traditional painting and digital techniques that bring together elements of abstraction and impressionism and motifs that incorporate a range of themes in a brilliant mix of colour and line, offered is a setting suggestive of a primal forest with effects by Boris Twist.

There is something of a divide in styles presented here: those pieces centred on abstraction are clearly so; their form frequently wild or suggesting a certain frenzy. There is a deep and almost primal sense of emotion to them in the predominant use of lauder colours. The one apparent exception to this is Remembering Blue, a piece using the calming influence of blue shades that evokes a sense of anchor and balance amidst the more vibrant emotive splashes of the pieces around it.

Mixed with these are pieces that offer impressionist views that are equally as captivating and offer some unique commentary on human history and our relationship with nature. Take Marsh as an example, as it carries within it  a primal memory of humanity’s origins as a hunter-gatherer and times when hunts and the animals encountered were recorded through painting on rock walls, or Caravan, capturing that period of time – notably in the American west – when meat came to humanity’s growing towns and cities by means of the cattle drive.

Meanwhile, Torn perhaps offers a link between the impressionist and the emotional tones of the more abstracted pieces, the bull within it clearly evocative of ideas or emotional responses (being bull headed, charging in like a bull, etc.), whilst Shadowlands offers a narrative of freedom and spiritual escape.

Intriguing in form, Combined Technique is an engaging visual display of art, a unique combination of technique and form.

A short walk from Combined Technique is Wolfie Tells Fibs an exhibition of poetry by Fibonacci poetry penned by Wolfgang Glinka under his physical world name, Colin Bell.

For those unfamiliar with it, Fibonacci Poetry  – or Fibs – plays on the Fibonacci sequence. The typical Fib is a six line, 20 syllable poem with a syllable count by line of 1/1/2/3/5/8 – with as many syllables per line as the line’s corresponding place in the Fibonacci sequence. Gregory K. Pincus is credited with bringing this 6-line form to widespread recognition; however, as a broader poetical form, “Fibs” can be said to date back to Sanskrit prosody, with a similar stress on long and short syllables.

As a poetic form, Fibonacci Poetry has become an expression in art not only for the mathematical progression of syllables, but for the fact poems can be shaped by rules – such as ascending from a single syllable to a set number of syllables at the mid-point in the poem, before descending once more back to a single syllable, or running in reverse, or forming mirrored forms in line / syllable counts. Much of this is in evidence in the poems displayed with the Glinka Gallery space, the poems themselves rich in imagery that encompasses a range of themes and narratives.

Utilising the Fib to present multi-stanza poems and well as single stanza pieces, and even reference classical poetry forms – do check out Three Fibonacci Poems After Ovid’s Metamorphosis – Wolfgang presents a rich and engaging display of Fibonacci Poems.

SLurl Details

• The Glinka Gallery (Nolidae, rated Moderate)

It’s been too long sine my last visit to Ribong Gallery Artspace, operated and curated by San (Santoshima) – so my apologies to her for this being the case.

Ribong is a gallery that offers extensive space for 2D and 3D arts, the individual display spaces separated by altitude, giving each a sense of individuality. They can also be reached either via direct LM, or for first-time visitors via the gallery’s lobby. Exhibitions within the spaces can be quite long-lasting (or possibly permanent); I actually reviewed Harbor Galaxy’s Alter Ego, available at Ribong 2535, in October 2019, and Bamboo Barnes’ Receding Reality at Ribong 2243 in September 2020.

More recent to Ribong is Meiló Minotaur’s Confined Within Me, located at Ribong 903. While it is a more recent exhibit than those mentioned above, it nevertheless shares something of a common theme: that of introspection, the nature of self and reflections on identity, although its core theme is perhaps somewhat deeper and potentially darker.

Starting from a large room with a small poem printed on one wall, the installation leads visitors through a pattern of spaces that grow smaller in size, including narrow hallways. Within them are figures, partially embedded in walls, or lined between the narrowing walls, slumped, eyes or mouths covered, whilst further inside the installation the figures become more smoke-like or become themselves wreathed in black, apparently trying to pull themselves apart.

The references to mental illness – depression, anxiety, depersonalisation-derealisation disorder (DPD), the sense of losing one’s own identity – losing oneself -, of being trapped within one’s life – all appear clear. Without the need for extensive exposition, but through simple representation and a six line poem that is itself incredibly powerful in its wording, Confined Within Me visualises a range of conditions that can be so debilitating to those who suffer from them, but so hard to put into words such that others might might understand.

It is an exhibition that is given additional poignancy at this time: With a global pandemic forcing people to keep apart, stay at home, avoid social contact, those caught in the web of mental illness can find their sense of separation even harder to endure, and made more visible through the need to wear face masks – something that may well be referenced by Confined Within Me through the mouth coverings worn by some of the figures (which also represent the sense of not being heard, just as the eye coverings represent the sense of not being seen.

Opening on Saturday March 20th at Ribong 1920 is Silence is the Flower, by Joss Floss, an exhibition of 2D art. Again, it shares something of a connection with the other three exhibitions, in that it explores communications and feelings, as noted in the artist’s statement on the images presented:

“Silence is the Flower” is a Japanese phrase roughly translated as “Some things are better left unsaid.” These pictures are about not saying and not showing.

– Joss Floss on Silence is the Flower

Spread across three levels (use the yellow teleport cubes to move between them), Silence presents a series of images in soft focus or which use depth of field in order to focus the eye on the flowers whilst keeping the figure (Joss) either out-of-focus or gently blurred, the idea being to allow the flowers and tone to offer the sense of mood and message within each piece.

What this might be is down to those observing each of the of the images presented here. What is clear is that the direct, unadorned method of presentation allows the eye to focus on each picture, allowing it so suggest its own story.

Whether taken individually or as part of a visit that also encompasses Alter Ego and Receding Reality, both Silence is the Flower and Confined Within Me offer two engaging exhibitions.

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Mieum is rated General

• Ribong Gallery Artspace Lobby
• Confined within Me – Ribong 903
• Silence is the Flower – Ribong 1920

Ten years ago, on March 11th 2011, the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900, took place off the coast of Japan. The epicentre of the magnitude 9.0–9.1 megathrust ‘quake lay some 72 kilometres east of the Oshika Peninsula of Honshu, at a depth of around 32 km below the surface of the ocean. It caused an upthrust of between 6 to 8 metres that gave rise to a massively powerful tsunami.

The wave front of this tsunami struck the northern islands of Japan at speeds of up to 700 km/h and a maximum wave height of 39 metres (Omoe peninsula, Miyako City). It travelled inland up to 10 km, creating widespread devastation and caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accidents. As of 2019, the death toll as a direct result of the tsunami was put at 15,899, most killed as a result of drowning. A further 6,157 were injured and 2,529 remain missing.

In the aftermath, national and international relief efforts were launched, and people around the world sought to help those affected by the disaster through a wide variety of fund-raising efforts. In Second Life, Curator, who was still relatively new to the platform at the time, put together a special art exhibition with funds going to a number of charities dedicated to recovery efforts.

Entitled One Year After, the exhibition featured the paintings of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Katsushika Hokusai, two of Japan’s foremost exponents of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. Yoshitoshi’s career spanned the end of the Edo period of Japan and the rise of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration, and he was the last great master of ukiyo-e. In particular, the exhibition featured his major series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. Hokusai preceded Yoshitoshi (their lives overlapping by just ten years), and he was largely responsible for transforming ukiyo-e as an art form, with his greatest work being 36 Views of Mt. Fuji.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Tōhoku earthquake and its tsunami, Curator once again offers one Year After for people to appreciate. Hosted at the gallery space above Bagheera Kristan’s Bohemian Underground store, it also has the alternate title of (now) Ten Years After to mark the tenth anniversary of the tsunami. And if you’ve never encountered either Yoshitoshi’s or Hokusai’s work before, I highly recommend paying a visit.

Ukiyo-e first rose to prominent in the late 1670s and continued to flourish through until the Meiji Restoration saw it enter a sharp decline in the rush towards modernisation. As an art form, it initially focused on portraiture featuring courtesans, geishas and kabuki actors. However, Hokusai, however, broadens the genre to include landscapes, plants, and animals, a broader expressionism Yoshitoshi would embrace.

There is particular relevance in using Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon to commemorate the tsunami.  While he was fascinated by all that was happening as a result of Japan opening its doors to the rest of the world, Yoshitoshi became concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, so much so that towards the end of his life he turned more towards Ukiyo-e, using it as a means to comment on the passing of Japan’s traditional ways in its headlong rush to modernise.

Thus, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon as presented here provides a poignant means of commemorating both the washing away of translational Japanese ways in the tide of change witnessed by Yoshitoshi, and the loss of life caused by the tsunami.

Each image in One Hundred Aspects depicts figures from Japanese and Chinese legend, history, literature, folklore and theatre captured at a moment in time, often in a poetic dialogue with the Moon. The presence of the Moon additionally references the role it played in the pre-industrialised Japanese calendar, when specific events on both a national and personal level being marked by the lunar phases. In this, the choice of this collection for the exhibition adds a further layer of meaning, marking as it does an event and point in time that affected some many lives and a nation as a whole.

Similarly, Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt. Fuji has a certain poignancy in the context of commemorating the tsunami. It’s a series in which several of the images embody Japan’s long relationship with the seas around it – the most famous being The Great Wave off Kanagawa, depicting a large rogue wave about to overwhelm three boats. They also, as the title of the collection suggests, feature images feature Mount Fiji – the enduring symbol of the nation, the people and the spirit of Japan throughout the ages.

Although some of the pieces are slightly blurred as a result of the reproduction process, these are genuinely engaging copies of an evocative series. Each piece has a a richness of narrative to it and a deep sense of history, and those that you find attractive enough can be purchased for L$100 each.

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• One Year After / (now) Ten Years After (Bohemian Underground, Wolchulsan, rated Moderate)

I did not intend to write about another exhibition at Chuck Clip’s Sinful Retreat so quickly after my last arts write-up (see: Sheba’s mystical art in Second Life). however, after witnessing Isabel Hermano’s exhibition at the Janus II Gallery in the region, I could not help but put fingers to keyboard.

Given the breadth of her work that is on display, I’m rather surprised to admit that’s I’ve not previously documented Isabel’s art, as her digital images are truly  captivating to the eye.

Although entitled Living in a Steampunk World, the pieces offered through this exhibition feature much more than the style of retro-futuristic images we might normally associate with the idea of “steampunk”; while such elements  – the ideas of Victoriana, corsets, goggles, exotic mechanicals – present in several of the images, so to does the exhibition cast a wider net, capturing retro-modern elements, touches of Fritz Lang and Buck Rogers, hints of childhood, even a glimpse of contemporary science fiction.

This wider casting of the net doesn’t invalidate the title of the exhibition – rather, it enhances it, and offers a new twist.

Take Tinman, with its the image of C3-PO for example: whilst his appearance might bring to mind thoughts of a technologically advanced, spacefaring civilisation far beyond that of our own, his appearance as a “tin man” is not actually that far removed from the ideas of steampunk mechanoids.

Isabel notes that she likes to use bold colours  on account of the depth of passion they suggest, and that use of colour is clearly shown here – and I would argue that its presence in these pieces adds a further dimension to their narrative. And make no mistake, these are pieces rich in their ability frame moments and ideas that capture the eye and transport the imagination in the most marvellous of ways, whether or not the idea of steampunk are central to the journey.

For me, this sense of narrative is particularly strong with Radio City Music Hall, and The Sisters. These are also two pieces that may not immediately appear to be particularly “steampunk” in nature. The first brings to mind the era of Marlowe and hard-boiled detectives, whilst the latter richly mixes ideas. With the three female characters, there is a clear reference to Fritz Lang and Metropolis, whilst the airship above them both suggests steampunk airship – but set against a cosmic backdrop of a nebula cloud, it also carries that Buck Rogers vibe mentioned above.

Theses are also pieces that are rich in motif and symbol – the use of animals in several of the more “steampunky” pictures, the juxtaposition of modern technology with suggestions of the Victorian era, mechanical octopuses, and so on that can lead the imagination onwards in it journey – and the eye to the richness of detail within each of these pieces.

Open through until early April, Living in a Steampunk World is a captivating exhibition of digital art.

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• Janus II Gallery (Sinful Retreat, rated Adult)

When Sheba Blitz first arrived in Second Life, it was without any preconceived ideas about displaying her work.  However, after encountering the vibrant arts communities that exist across the platform she decided to give exhibiting her work a try – and I, for one am glad that she did.

Hailing from Australia, Sheba has studied art in a variety of styles over the years, gaining several diplomas in the process. However, throughout her time as an artist, she has found focus in painting mandalas – which she does so quite exquisitely.

For those unfamiliar with it, the mandala (literally meaning “circle” in Sanskrit) is a symbol with very deep religious, spiritual and even political meaning. It may be employed in spiritual guidance, focusing the attention of practitioners and adepts, as a means of establishing a sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. Mandalas are particularly used in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Shintoism. They also have new age symbolism, and were regarded by Jung as a means to explore “the fourfold nature of the psyche”.

I first encountered Sheba’s work five years ago and was immediately captivated. Specialising in painting quarternity mandalas, she works with gouache, acrylics and metallic paints on either canvas or paper, drawing on sources such as music, books, astrology and tarot symbolism as her inspiration. The finished pieces are all intricately beautiful, endlessly geometric, generally perfectly symmetric, and rich in symbolism.

All of this creative, spiritual beauty can currently be seen at the Janus III Gallery on Chuck Clip’s Sinful Retreat, where Sheba is exhibiting a selection of her work entitled Into the Mystic.

Across the two floors of the gallery one can find the most meticulous pieces of art that are utterly captivating.

Whenever I witness Sheba’s art and and consider the work that went into each piece, I cannot help but be put in mind of dul-tson-kyil-khor (mandala of coloured powders) in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Like those painstakingly constructed sand paintings, there is an inherent balance within Sheba’s paintings in terms of symmetry and harmony that lifts the spirit whilst also speak to the depth of focus on the part of the artist.

Like the work of Tibetan monks, Sheba’s art is rich in iconography that combines geometric shapes and spiritual symbols.

However, unlike the Tibetan sand painting, which is intentionally impermanent, each piece ritualistically destroyed and used as an offering to water and life once the meditation of its creation is complete, Sheba’s art endures well beyond its creation. In this, while sand painting might speak to the impermanence of life and the cycle of creation, Sheba’s art reflects the enduring nature and balance of the cosmos around us.

This is art for which images on a page simply do not do justice. Each piece is so rich in form and intricate in detail, Sheba’s work deserves to be seen and appreciated first hand whether you are drawn to the spiritual symbolism of the mandala or simply drawn to art for its beauty and geometry So do take time to drop into the Janus III Gallery before this exhibition ends later in the month.

SLurl Details

• Janus III Gallery (Sinful Retreat, rated Adult)