THE EDGE Art Gallery, operated by Ladmilla and Eli Medier has a new home in Second Life. Now occupying a 2-storey villa-style house, the gallery serves as a centre for the couple to display their own art alongside of a new project they have initiated called Art on the Road.
The large interior walls of the house provide space for Ladmilla’s and Eli’s SL-centric images, with the rooms spacious enough so that the furniture within them doesn’t interfere with views of the art. These offer a mix of unique pieces by Ladmilla and Eli, and a set of joint pieces feature an image by Ladmilla and words by Eli.
THE EDGE Art Gallery, May 2020
This latter style of art by the couple has always had a fascination for me. The melding of Eli’s words with Ladmilla’s art offers a rich combination of imagery and narrative that cannot fail to capture the imagination. Eli also provides his own images and words, while Ladmilla presents a series of her own images taken from her journeys around Second Life, adding to the overall richness of the art on display within the gallery. Outside, the garden fence offers space for art by some of Ladmilla’s and Eli’s favourite artists.
Also to be found in the gallery is information on Lamilla and Eli’s Art on the Road series, mentioned above.
THE EDGE Art Gallery, May 2020
This is a project to bring art to the roads of Mainland, with small gallery spaces, offering people the chance to drop by and appreciate Eli’s and Ladmilla’s art.
We thought it would be nice that instead of calling people to the usual galleries, we’d use some spots like small pubs along the roadsides what may attract people’s attention. We don’t know how well it will work, although we hope to keep the spaces for some time, so we’re just a trying things. Besides, we love mainland!
– Ladmilla
At the time of writing, three such locations have been set up by the couple, landmarks below. As well as offering more opportunities to enjoy Lamilla’s and Eli’s art, each location includes a tandem bicycle rezzer so that visitors can enjoy along the roads of Mainland.
A Favela, May 2020 – click any image for full size
A favela is a unique, low and middle-income, unregulated settlement or neighbourhood in Brazil that has experienced historical governmental neglect. With a history dating back to the 1800s, most modern favelas appeared in the 1970s due to rural exodus, when many people left rural areas of Brazil and moved to cities, but could not find regulated places to live, and the 2010 Brazilian census reported that around 6% of the country’s population lived in favela or similar housing.
Around Rio de Janeiro, the favela cling to the sides of the hills, looking from a distance like colourful buildings – a colourful façade can oft disguise the crowded nature of a favela, with their tightly packed houses with little inthe way of open space, and where people strive to find a little corner of a rooftop in place of having any form of yard or garden.
A Favela, May 2020
The largest hillside favela in Rio de Janeiro (as well as in Brazil as a whole, and the second largest shanty town in Latin America) is Rocinha; and this mini city-in-a-city might well be the inspiration for the latest design by Lotus Mastroianni and Frecoi called, appropriately enough, A Favela.
Unlike their past builds, such as RioSisco Studio Pictures, ChatuChak or Kun-Tei-Ner, all of which covered a complete region, A Favela occupies a 4096 sq metre parcel, and sits as a sky build. This makes a a very compact build, but the space is effectively used to recreate the look and feel of a portion of a favela: the houses are stacked vertically, some buildings looking like there might be multiple apartments, others looking like that are single homes with one room atop the last; some have traditional water tanks, others have the famous blue roof-top tanks provided by power and water company Cedea.
A Favela, May 2020
As with their physical world counterparts, these buildings are made of a variety of materials, their roofs concrete or sheets of corrugated sheets of metal. Between them, a single road winds up the side of a rocky hill, the houses forming deep canyons, the “cliffs” of which and dotted with verandahs and windows. Towards the top of the setting, the road levels before apparently vanishing into a tunnel, above which a backdrop rises, offering a sense of the favela continuing up the mountainside while Christ the Redeemer stands with arms outstretched on a more distant peak.
Like a real favela several of the buildings have steps leading up to rooftop areas that offer places to sit, whilst walls are given life through the application of graffiti paintings or thanks to clothes and towels hung to dry from rails placed outside of windows. Further life is added to the setting through the inclusion of dogs and cats in passages on and rooftop “yards”, while pigs and chickens wander the road’s twists below, ignoring the old cars and trucks parked at the roadside (one of them so out of condition, it needs the help of large stones to hold it in place). Birds circling overhead and a sound scape give a further depth to the setting, rounding it out nicely.
A Favela, May 2020
A small, detailed setting ripe for photography and offering a small glimpse of life in parts of Rio and Brazil.
2020 Kultivate Sensuality Art Exhibition: Barry Richez
Officially running from Friday May 22nd through Sunday May 24th inclusive (so my apologies to John and the Kultivate team for getting to it so late) is the 2020 Kultivate Sensuality Art Exhibition. As the name suggests, this is very much an exhibition of adult-themed art, so may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Located on a sky platform, the exhibition presents the artists work in a series of individual gallery spaces offered in as a motel built around set around a central square that offers the main event space.
Kultivate Sensuality Art Exhibition: PlayfulKelly
When last writing about the exhibition – admittedly in 2018 – I noted that the individual exhibitions at that time predominantly focused on the female form, with the male a little lacking, and that themes were perhaps more entrenched in a familiar take on “sensuality”: full frontal nudity, sex, and SM / BDSM, rather than drawing from a broader interpretation of the word, adding:
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with this per se in an adult-themed art exhibition, and I’ve nothing against what is on display within this exhibition. However, sensuality is a broad canvas on which to paint, and opting from full frontal or direct nudity or “simple” themes such as BDSM at times miss an opportunity to engage imaginations beyond just titillation.
Let’s face it, the most erotic and sensuous organ in the body is the mind: so it would perhaps be nice to see more artists recognise this, and play or toy with our imaginations rather than perhaps opting for the easier boobs’n’bums approach. Which shouldn’t be taken as a complaint against seeing this exhibition. As noted above, it’s a personal – and subjective – point-of-view, although I hope it may challenge some artists to consider the subject more broadly next time around 🙂 .
I doubt those words have any bearing on the selection of art offered for an exhibition two years on, but I’m pleased to say that both the male figure gets more of a look-in with this exhibit, while there is that broader richness of general sensuality offered by a number of artists that clearly works to excite the imagination: views of stocking clad legs, the brush of lipstick coated lips on lipstick coated lips, the use of soft-focus and monochrome to add atmosphere and a subtle touch.
Of course, nudity, sex and BDSM are still to be found, but overall – and allowing for the fact I missed the 2019 event – the 2020 exhibition strikes me as a more rounded affair in terms of the breadth of art on display; and I admit I found a piece by Gina Brucato featuring a champagne bottle a particularly artistically cheeky piece in its message!
Kultivate Sensuality Art Exhibition: Myra Wildmist
Unfortunately, as I missed getting this piece out sooner, there are only a couple of events left in the show to report on. These are (times SLT):
Sunday, May 24, 2018
Sensuality Photo Challenge Winners Announced.
13:00 – 14:00 Sinful Event with Erika Ordinary (L$2,000 Bosh Gift Card Giveaway – Adult Furniture).
23:59 – Exhibition ends.
However, you still have time to visit the exhibition.
The Woods of Whimsy, May 2020 – click any image for full size
Update, June 3rd: It appears Woods of Whimsy has closed.
Gilfalma Ashbourne recently invited us to visit her recently opened Mainland parcel, Woods of Whimsy. Within it, she has created a garden setting with something of a Middle Earth setting that stirs in one or two other influences to create a space of natural beauty ripe for exploration and photography.
The Woods of Whimsy, a Tolkien inspired land, mixes virtual gardening with a love of magic and the divine. Here paths meander through waterfalls, threading ancient ruins with a verdant splendour.
– Woods of Whimsy description
Woods of Whimsy, May 2020
Bordered by water on two sides and high cliffs on the other two, this is a place that blends the space between these borders to create an environment that is richly evocative. Fronting the high cliffs, the parcel’s uplands step gently down to the lowlands then in turn eases into a cypress-laden swampland that is fed by a stream that also tumbles from the uplands. To the east, the boundary to the parcel is marked by a river-like body of water which, together with a curtain of trees. makes for a natural border between the woods and the neighbouring region.
Sitting within the lowlands and nestled between stream and river, are the ruins of a church, an overgrown graveyard beside it. Forming the parcel’s landing point, the ruins don’t immediately feel particularly Tolkien-esque – but first looks can be deceptive when taken as a part of the whole.
Woods of Whimsy, May 2020
Beyond the walls of this ruin, a number of grassy paths run outwards through the trees, one to a riverside conservatory, another passing along the curtain of trees and river border to reach an ancient rotunda by way of a camp site. The third points the way towards the inland corner of the parcel, and it is here that things become more Middle-Earth in nature.
This last path itself further splits in to three a short walk from the old church, the rightmost arm of which climbs by way of slope and stair to reach arches and gardens that might be taken for outlying areas of Rivendell.
Woods of Whimsy, May 2020
Rich in statues (one of which is very Entish in nature) and the remnants of statues, the climb gives the setting a feeling of great age, so much so, that the presence of these gardens and structures perfectly enfolds the old church and the gazebos below, making them very much a part of the landscape; even the Roman temple located at the end of a further branching of the path sits within the elvish nature of the climb.
Waterfalls tumble from numerous points in the cliffs, filling pools. These are again fully in keeping with the elvish feel to the region – the elvish love of water being well established in Tolkien’s lore. Follow two of the upper reaches of the paths climbing and winding over the highlands, and it is possible to find your way down to one of the most iconic elements of Middle Earth, and the starting point for his published tales: a hole in the ground, one dressed entirely in keeping with the opening of The Hobbit.
Woods of Whimsy, May 2020
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hold, and that means comfort.
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937
This is not the only hole in the ground within the parcel; another of the ground-level paths offers a route to where a tunnel leads into the roots of the high cliffs, and a realm that brings forth a more dwarfish feel to the setting – one that at its entrance has an echo of Middle Earth: a cobweb and a spider.
Woods of Whimsy, May 2020
True, it’s not a spider to match those found in Mirkwood, but it’s hard not to see it and think of that part of Bilbo Baggins’ journey to the lonely Mountain. Connected by these tunnels are a number of chambers, one of which in particular carries a motif from another modern fantasy epic: G.R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.
All of this barely scratches the surface of all that is to be found within the Woods of Whimsy with its places to sit, blending of themes, multiplicity of paths and trails that give the parcel a sense of size beyond its boundaries – and the feeling that somewhere, perhaps, up in the hills and among the cliffs there just might be a path leading down into Rivendell proper. Most definitely a much-see destination for all virtual travellers.
CybeleMoon (aka Hana Hoobinoo) is an artist oft featured in these pages. Her mixed media art is renowned for its fabulous richness of tone, balance of light and shade, depth of symbolism and – most poignantly – its wonderful framing of narrative that makes any exhibition of her work in Second Life utterly unmissable.
There are many ways to explore Cybele’s work, some of which I’ve touched upon in writing about it. However, there is one aspect that I’ve not really explored in words thus far; one that Cybele herself examines in her latest solo exhibition The Spaces Between Heaven and Time, which is currently on display the the Kultivate Signature Gallery.
I often use doorways, windows, bridges and solitude in my images as a way of conveying my impression of stopping the world and perceiving my own reality in the shifting tapestry of time.
– CybeleMoon
Kultivate Signature Gallery: CybeleMoon
Through this series of images Cybele explores her relationship with her art and the idea of liminality – that as an artist (and indeed we, as observers of her art) – she stands on a threshold between two states: the reality she experiences rooted in the physical world, and the worlds presented through her images.
In the strictest sense, liminality is used to define the state of ambiguity that is said to exist within a rite of passage, in which participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. With Cybele’s art, however, I would suggest ambiguity or disorientation have but a small role to play (if any at all). Rather, that in facing her art, we are more in a state of enticement or longing; what we see in each piece offers us a glimpse of a world that calls softly to us to enter – a place we desire.
Kultivate Signature Gallery: CybeleMoon
There is more here as well; a nuance that is both subtle and yet entirely fitting given the state of the world as it stands in May 2020 and in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. It’s a careful, unobtrusive reminder that solitude and / or being alone is not necessarily the a contrary state of being (as some seem to believe). Rather, it allows one to give time to self – to appreciate, to learn, to relax, to enjoy, to reflect – to create. In these times of social distancing.
The manner in which the images reflect the themes within this exhibition offers an further nuanced layer to it. Take Dr. Chandra, Will I Dream for example. Through it, we can witness the beauty of solitude as reflected in the single outstretched arm and the simple, delicate pleasure offered by passing a hand lightly over the flowers in a field, while the idea of liminality sits within the title of its title, which comes as a quote from the climax of the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact, in which HAL 9000 sits on the threshold between two realities, whilst the words themselves reflect our very questioning of the nature of life.
Kultivate Signature Gallery: CybeleMoon
The Spaces Between Heaven and Time is a beautifully nuanced exploration of ideas through art – one that absolutely not be missed.
Yes – Endless, May 2020 – click any image for full size
In April 2020, we visited SombreNyx’s latest design for Endless, her full region (see A journey to Orkney in Second Life). It’s a region we’ve often visited to appreciate Sombre’s work, and it has also been the home to at least one build – located in the sky over Sombre’s work – by Jackson Cruyff. It was Jackson’s work that drew us back to Endless, as he has recently completed another sky build.
Entitled Yes, this new build that keeps up with the rugged island feel of Endless 58-58N, albeit with a more mountainous look to it. It is also a most unusual setting, as Jackson explains:
A set of rickety structures, barely held together, creaky and possibly perilous. On the mountain top, optimism against all odds, and turkeys.
– Jackson Cruyff
Yes – Endless 58-58N, May 2020
From the landing point – a wooden deck built over an outcrop of rock sitting just off shore from the main island – a rope bridge points toward the route of exploration. Not that the latter is hard to miss; directly in front of any arrival, the island rises from grassy lowlands to the high rocky peak of it single mountain that tend to beckon to anyone on the landing point deck.
Trees and bushes are scattered over the lowlands, which undulate gently while rocky outcrops mark the coast. There are no beaches to be found here, and no distractions from the main features of the island.
These take the from a set of five wooden board walks, each raised on stilt-like legs. Each offers something different: a walk out over the waters of a small bay, a circular walk looping around a central deck, a figure-of-eight that offers an infinity walk over bushes and a camp site; a second circular walk that passes endlessly through a rocky arch in the mountain’s foothills; and the greatest of them all, a swirling climb offering the way up to the summit of the mountain.
Yes – Endless 58-58N, May 2020
From a distance it is possible to mistake the latter walk as perhaps part of an old-style roller coaster, or scaffolding designed to enclose some form of tower or similar structure. Only the long arms connecting it with the flank of the mountain suggesting it is in fact something else.
The impulse to climb this structure first is completely natural – but I’d urge you to leave it until last, and explore at least a couple of the other board walks first. I say this because this large structure makes for an interesting climb. Vertigo is not a common sensation people tend to experience in Second Life, and few things in-world tend to be a challenge to the senses. However, these are the feelings a climb around and up this walk can cause.
Yes – Endless 58-58N, May 2020
I say this not in any way negativity; rather it is to Jackson’s credit that a walk up the spiralling board walk can result in very real sensations of giddiness. In this I’d venture to say a walk up to the top of the structure is one of the more unique experiences found in Second Life.
Once there, a more sedate walk along the uppermost outstretched finger of the board walk will take you by stair, ramp and additional climb to the mountain top, where can be found a deck on which to appreciate the view and the aforementioned turkeys.
Rounded out by a subtle sound scape that is again in keeping with Endless 58-58N, Yes is a location well worth taking the time visit and appreciate.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 