Tag: Art 2018

A Carnival of the Arts in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Carnival of the Arts: Silas Merlin

The Dirty Grind Independent Artist community is celebrating its fifth anniversary over the weekend of Friday, September 7th through Sunday, September 9th, 2018 with a Carnival of the Arts. The weekend will be marked by live music sets throughout the three days, and also art displays by Enola Vaher, Toysoldier Thor and Silas Merlin, who appears at the Dirty Grind as the celebration’s featured artist.

The focal point for the event is a newly revamped venue building, where the artists can be found, and a stage area has been established in the back lot area. Inside the building, 2D and 3D art Enola and Toysoldier is located on two floors to one side of the building, with Silas’ 2D pastel art from the physical world and his 3D mesh sculptures created for Second Life can be found at the back of the building, again on two floors, facing the stage area.

Carnival of the Arts: Enola Vaher

The music event kicks-off from 15:00 SLT on Friday, September 7th, and at the time from writing, the schedule looked as follows:

Time Friday 7th Saturday 8th Sunday 9th
14:00 — Shannon Oherlihy Wald Schridde
15:00 Davis Cisiszer Thunderfoot Lorefield Lexie Smith
16:00 Strum Diesel Phime Alcott Winston Ackland
17:00 The Matthew Show Senjata Witt DimiVan Ludwig
18:00 Jamba Losangelas Grace McDunnough The Vinnie Show
19:00 Twostep Spiritweaver Bearsheart Effinjay
20:00 Benski Korhonen Suzen Juel Ethan Kamaboko

However, given that events can always undergo last-minute changes, be sure to check the Dirty Grind website for updates or changes to the schedule.

The art displays are compact, but deliver a good sense of the work of the three artists. Enola’s 2D art – featuring both SL photographs and also drawings – is displayed on the upper floor of the gallery space she shares with Toysoldier Thor, and is an evocative mix of images. On the ground floor, Toysoldier presents a mix of his 2D paintings and 3D art, which is always captivating to see.

Carnival of the Arts: Toysoldier Thor

Silas Merlin remains one of the artists I deeply admire. His work in pastels is extraordinary, and while perhaps a little on the small side, the pieces presented at the Dirty Grind serve as a welcome introduction to his 2D work for those unfamiliar with it – and I do recommend seeking his art out whenever you have the opportunity to do so. His 3D work is perhaps more familiar to people in Second Life, being very popular among collectors, and the pieces he’s selected for this exhibition again present a good cross-section of his sculptures for those wishing to familiarise themselves with his 3D work.

So, do make a point of hopping along to the Dirty Grind over the weekend and wishing them a happy anniversary.

Carnival of the Arts: Silas Merlin

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Sea Monsters in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sea Monsters

Update: Sea Monsters has closed. SLurls have therefore been removed from this article.

Open through until the end of September 2018, is Sea Monsters by Citta Wiskee. Created on a homestead region, it forms both an art exhibition and a place to visit, and offers a unique environment for explorers.

Sitting under a stormy sky lies a series of green islands caught within a dark sea. The largest of these islands is ringed by the others, and forms the landing point. Wooded and devoid of buildings, it is home to little water drop spirits, with more scattered across several of the other islands. Tiny and white, these little spirits offer a greeting to travellers or play instruments or paddle leaf boats on a pond or simply watch / listen. But they are not the only inhabitants of this region islands; there are others around the islands and some quite literally watching over them.

Sea Monsters

Look up, and you’ll see glowing jellyfish “swimming” through the air – the clouds high above them looking so much like waves of the ocean when seen from below. Light beams seem to penetrate the clouds, eddying and swirling in circles as dust floats, plankton-like through the air, while on the horizon a constellation of pinpoint lights maps the outline of a humpback whale. But these are not what is likely to hold your attention.

Look around the sky, and you’ll find two actual humpback whales floating in the air, heads dipped towards the island as they look back at you benignly. Not far from them, circling slowly above the  dark waters is a plump blue whale carrying a garden on its back. Click on it, and you can sit on a couple of poses to ride with it – or click the rope ladder hanging from the whale’s flank to ride daredevil-like.

Sea Monsters

There is no direct way between the islands other by flying, which is a little bit of a shame, but each offers something of its own little vignette to be enjoyed. On one a piano awaits a player, on another a swing seeks a rider, while on all of them more little water drop spirits can be found. One of these islands is home to a little movie theatre, showing an odd little slide-show film, cushions set before the screen for those who want to watch.

And the art? That lies underwater, and potentially easily missed for those who don’t look. Arcing around the east side of the central island is a submerged gallery displaying Citta’s art. Most of the seventeen images in the display reflect the theme of the region (or is that the theme of the region reflects their content?), with whales and other sea creates prominent within them. All are presented on mesh “paper” that appears to be flexed by the watery currents and include the play of water over their faces.

Sea Monsters

This gallery space, with a drowned woodland bordering one side, forms a garden-like space, glowing planets forming a soft carpet among which can be found ruins and places where more water drop spirits play. Overhead, beluga and humpback whales share the waters with rays and schools of small fish.

The art itself is reflective of moods or feeling – notably being on one’s own whilst wishing for something. As such, they are quite able to strum the heartstrings whilst also being beautifully framed and presented to visitors, the muted colours adding to the stories they have to tell. Again, it would be nice to have a more obvious way of moving between island and underwater gallery other than flying, but this is genuinely a very minor point.

Sea Monsters – hitching a ride

When you have done exploring and viewing, but don’t want to leave, keep an eye out for the paper boats floating on the water. They offer places to sit and reflect for one or two people.

An atmospheric, otherworldly setting, offering opportunities for photography as well as presenting some evocative art of its own, Sea Monsters makes for an entrancing visit.

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  • Sea Monsters (Yankari Island, rated: Moderate)

Land, Water, Sky in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
National Museum of Caledon: Phrynne

Opening on Wednesday, September 5th, 2018 at the National Museum of Caledon, is an exhibition of the physical world photography of Phrynne, Dean of Commons at Caledon Oxbridge. Entitled Land, Water Sky, Phrynne describes the exhibition as a record of some of the places in North America she has visited and loves.

The upper floor and the centre in the lower floor contain photos of the Genesee River Gorge as the river flows through Letchworth State Park [the] oldest state park in New York … Also on the upper floor are photos taken on Oahu of sea and sky and wildlife. Downstairs are photos from Vermont, West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland and Minnesota, landscapes both wild and tame.

– Phrynne, describing Land, Water, Sky

National Museum of Caledon: Phrynne

The resultant images in the exhibition are dramatic in tone and scope; particularly those of the Genesee River Gorge, which is presented in loving detail – although as Phrynne notes, the falls within the gorge are not easy to capture in a single frame, except at distance.

The Oahu images are admittedly a little more mixed in the impressions, the leave, but are more than compensated for by the images captured in Vermont, Maryland, etc. These are again rich in composition, and offer both intriguing views and a little humour – as witness by Grasshopper Observer and What Do You See?

National Museum of Caledon: Phrynne

In all, some 34 images are offered in the exhibition – all of which are for sale -, which makes for a further eye-catching  display of art at the museum, which will remain open through September. Should you enjoy your visit, do leave a comment in the guest book; while an offering towards the continued upkeep of the museum would also doubtless be appreciated by Star (astarynite), the museum’s curator.

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Through the Gates of Oria in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Gates of Oria

Now open through until the end of the year is Tah’s (Tahiti Rae’s) latest full region installation, Gates of Oria.  Tahiti has a reputation of building immersive, often deeply expressive installations in Second Life. I first visited one of her installations, 4077 MASH, a homage to the television series and a commentary on war, in 2014 (read here for more), and then was totally captivated by her Love, Henry installation from 2015 (read here for more) and by EVRE in 2016 (read here), her evocative, complex examination of consciousness, connectedness and time.

Gates of Oria does, in many ways, share the same roots as both Love, Henry and EVRE. As with both of those installations, it is very much a journey; one that, like Love, Henry, is intended to stir the emotions, tripping them into play by engaging our imaginations. At the same time, and like EVRE, it takes us on a physical journey through numerous worlds, the very triggers for engaging our imaginations and teasing our emotions, which vary in their themes from light to dark, reflecting the fact that fantasies come in many shades.

Gates of Oria

They say it takes 300 years for an oak tree to grow; 300 years for it to live; And 300 years for it to die. Perhaps our fantasy love took 300 years to grow; An eternity to live; And never dies. Maybe .. it’s real.

– Tahiti Rae, Gates of Oria

This is an installation designed to visually, aurally and musically connect with visitors, as is explained at the landing point. Along with the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model, enabling local sounds and the music stream for the installation is strongly recommended. I’d also suggest setting draw distance to around 300 metres, so the fullness of the larger spaces can be more easily seen without interruption. As the landing point also notes, proportions can be a little off in places, so when travelling a little playing with ALT-click camera movement and the use of the mouse wheel (or using the CTRL-8 / CTRL-9 / CTRL-0 combinations) can be required, particularly in the spaces where the backdrops appear intended to blend with the build.

Gates of Oria

Exploring the installation can be achieved in one of two ways: by teleporting to the ground and then travelling to the Gates themselves (additional telelport points within statues), and returning to the ground after each visit to make the next. Or, for those short on time, a note card listing the landmarks for all ten worlds can be used to hope directly from one to the next. The former of these approaches again echoes EVRE, except here there is no need to seek out the teleport points, they are found within groupings of statues. As such, and while the statues offer text to set the scene for the world to which that connect, there is no reason the note card LMs cannot be used to move between the different worlds once an initial visit to ground level has taken place.

Fantasy … can be such a risk; such a deep mystery; and profoundly the strongest certainty ever known.

– Tahiti Rae, Gates of Oria

I’m not going to run through all of the worlds; they are for you to experience for yourself. Suffice it to say all are very individual in tone and design, although some motifs can be found in more than one. Some openly demand exploration and can be extensive – such as Labrinto, which is perhaps the set piece of the installation; others are not quite as straightforward as might first appear to be the case, requiring equally considered exploration as there can be many details so easily missed in a quick walk / cam through. Deathless, for example, holds a certain Game of Thrones echo awaiting discovery. Still others are more open in nature, settings designed to allow the imagination to simply take flight – as with 4 Suns.

Gates of Oria

Within several of the worlds, art by CybeleMoon (Hanna Hoobinoo) can be found. Always fantastic in scope, these images give further flight to the imagination. Emotions are also stirred by the audio stream which, although occasionally interrupted by the briefest of adverts, offers music Tah states she has selected specifically for the installation.  Drawing heavily from the world of film (and where else, given the installation is about fantasy and imagination?), the music does add further depth to Gates of Oria – although I admit that I’m perhaps a little biased here in my response, as the stream features pieces by some of my own preferred composers  / arrangers, from the likes of M83, Taro Iwashiro, Bear McCreary, and the amazing Ramin Djawadi, through to several of the established greats of cinematic soundtracks: Morricone, Williams, Horner, Eidelman, Arnold, and more.

A series of events are planned throughout Gates of Oria’s run, details of which can be received by subscribing to Tah’s group at the landing point.

Gates of Oria

There are some minor niggles we encountered – falling through apparent solid objects in a couple of places, while the Eagles in Labrinto steadfastly refused to work for me (I simply right-clicked them for the guide description in the build floater); some of the guidance given was also a little confusing (“Exit far right corner” rather than “Exit to your right”). However, Gates of Oria is nevertheless evocative, imaginative, fully deserving of the time needed to explore and appreciate it.

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A sense of Confinement in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
DaphneArts: Confinement

Confinement is a complex installation located at DaphneArts, featuring a concept and art by Mi (Kissmi), with the physical space and overall presentation of the elements making up the installation by DaphneArts curators Angelika Corral and Sheldon Bergman (SheldonBR).

Mi says of the piece:

Confinement is our lot – from the beginning, in the womb, and even before, as soon as the idea of our conception germinates in the minds of our parents, enclosing us.

In other words, how we might grow as individuals is subject to a series of constraints which encompass us from the moment of conception through until death. Mi sees these constraints as falling into four main categories: geographical, mental, physical and social, and the visitor is invited to consider each of these both visually and aurally.

DaphneArts: Confinement

To fully achieve this, it is necessary to ensure your are correctly set-up to experience Confinement. This means ensuring you have Advanced Lighting Model enabled within your viewer (Preferences > Graphics > check the Advanced Lighting Model check box), you accept the local Windlight setting on arrival (automatic if you are using Firestorm; if you are using any other viewer, the preferred Windlight is Phototools – No Light by William Weaver. Should you not have this available with your viewer, try opting for Midnight or a similarly dark setting). Most importantly, you must accept the local HUD when offered and allow this to attach – without it, you will miss the greater part of the installation. Once attached, the HUD will display introductory text, which can be clicked away once read and the instructions followed. You are then ready to proceed.

This involves walking along a walkway constructed of massive cubes, while walls of these great cubes dominate the view left and right, separated from the walkway by deep chasms.  As one progresses, each of the four categories of confinement are revealed in turn, starting with Geographical. Images by Mi are illuminated, and the HUD presents visitors with the opportunity to hear a reading in French by Mi intended to encompass the symbolism of the confinement – and to read the words, presented in both French and English (note that due to the limitations of SL, the words may lag behind the reading; this is unavoidable).

DaphneArts: Confinement

For Geographical, the reading is taken from the lyrics to né quelque part (“born somewhere”), first recorded by Maxime Le Forestier in 1987; for Mental Confinement, we are presented with Un grand sommeil noir (A big black sheep), by the 19th Century poet Paul-Marie Verlaine; for Physical Confinement and Social Confinement, Mi presents two poems by Jacques Prévert: First Day and Familiale, respectively.

Each of these reading is accompanied by a series of images by Mi, also designed to be representative of the confinement they represent. Like the readings (including né quelque part, when the lyrics are separated from the music), these are stark pieces; abstract in nature, are designed not so much to illustrate, but to encourage, along with the spoken words, our deeper contemplation on the nature of each type of confinement we live within: those born – no pun intended – by the place and time of our birth; the confinement we face in terms of mental development – both our own capability and the opportunities society gives to us;  and the constraints we have to face within both life itself and in society’s expectations of the roles we will ultimately play.

DaphneArts: Confinement

Beyond the fourth confinement, the way leads down to a lower level, stairs lit by the naked flames of candles cupped in stone hands as the darkness closes around. In descending these steps, it is easy to feel as if one is descending into a sepulchre; or that the descent marks the passing from life to death. In echo of this, the hands towards the bottom of the stairs become more grasping in nature, as if trying to reach out from the walls and grasp the life from those passing.

Finally, the path leads by candlelight to a last figure:  a woman caught between death (the hand at her throat) and life (the candle emerging from her midriff). And thus the circle is closed; our ultimate confinement lies within the unknown: we emerge from it in birth, and descend back into it in death.

One since June 2018, Confinement is a layered installation deserving of time and consideration when visiting.

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A late summer exhibition at the Rose Gallery

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Rose Gallery: Biancajane Juliesse

The Rose Gallery, curated by  Shakti Sugafield (Shakti Adored) is hosting a”late summer” exhibition with a focus on physical work art, of which the greater theme within it might be said to be of an abstract nature.

On the ground floor, in Halls 1 and 2, the marvellous art of Sisi Biedermann continues to be exhibited. Her work – always marvellous to see – was a focus of what might be called the “early summer” ensemble of art on display at the Rose, again in Halls One and Two, and was a subject of my review of the Rose exhibitions at that time. Her display has been refreshed, with a further offering of her stunning art, some of which can also be found in her What a Wonderful World exhibition at the Lin C Art Gallery (read here for more).

The Rose Gallery: Sabine Mortenwold

Occupying Halls 3 and 4 is a visually impactful exhibition of abstract art by Sabine Mortenwold. Working in mixed media on canvas, Sabine’s work is powerful in tone and style, with the pieces offered at the Rose perhaps split into two halves. Within Hall 3 is a series of images that might be referred to as more deeply abstract, the 11 pieces  offering  reflections on emotional states. Vivid, strongly abstracted and layered, there are pieces that may at first be hard to grasp, but there is also a subtleness in the way each really is reflective of its title.

Hall 4, meanwhile offers what might be referred to as a “softer” series of Sabine’s art, with 13 pieces, the majority of which are clearly collage paintings of flowers. With softer tones and lines that clearly denote leaves and petals, these are perhaps the easier images to grasp with eye and mind, but each of them retains a wonderful abstract form within it.

The Rose Gallery: Sabine Mortenwold

Hall 6, on the floor above, is home to a series nine pieces of digital art by Leigh Quartz. Small the series might be, but each image is powerfully evocative, colour and tone carefully balanced to match its title, with just a hint of abstraction within some of them to offer a  connection with the exhibitions on the ground floor.

The Rose Gallery: Leigh Quartz

The use of the available space within the hall, with wide gaps between most of the pieces, allows the eye to focus on each painting in turn, encouraging the visitor to fully appreciate it without the distraction of neighbouring pieces slipping into the eye’s periphery. Thus it is possible to almost feel the primal force evoked with More Than a Conqueror, sense the passage of time in Seize the Moment, or find oneself caught within the gaze of Jolie Moly, seen on the right.

The abstract theme continues into Hall 7, where art by Etamae is presented.

Several of the ten images offered here are of an abstract nature in tone and idea; but with a much softer, more organic approach that perhaps found in the abstract pieces found within Sabine Mortenwold’s and Leigh Quartz’s pieces. Shapes here are more rounded, offer flow and a sense of quiet, almost relaxed (hypnotic?) motion within them.

Also offered within the set are paintings of flowers. Again abstract in nature, these offer a connection back to the flower-themed pictures within Sabine’s exhibition, and so again present a sense of thematic threads follow through the exhibitions, weaving them together on a subconscious level.

The Rose Gallery: Etamae

The Gallery’s main exhibition hall is given over to a presentation of art by Mary Sparrow, via her alter-ego(?) Bianca (biancajane Juliesse). Known for her portraiture of both humans and their pets, Mary’s art also encompasses still life, animals (notably horses) and photography.

Portraits and pets are very much the subject of the exhibit at the Rose Gallery, although wildlife and farm animals and poultry are also represented. The portraits  – all of them women and their dogs, are neatly presented to one side of the hall, becoming an exhibit in their own right, all presented in Art Deco or gilt-edges frames that perfectly compliment and complete the images they contain, which are themselves perfectly executed paintings.

However, it is likely to be the animal paintings on the remaining walls of the hall that are liable to captivate, simply because of the depth of character caught within them; not only with the portraits of cats and dogs, where it is perhaps most clearly evident, but also with the paintings of pig and piglet, cow, rooster and flamingos.

The Rose Gallery: Biancajane Juliesse

I believe this selection of exhibitions continues through into September – but please check with the gallery.

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