Tag: Art 2020

Opening on Saturday, June 6th, 2020 at Raging Bellls’ Raging Graphix Gallery is an exhibition that I’m both delighted and honoured to be sharing with the extraordinary talent of Etamae, and which is entitled A Celebration of the Arts, but which might also have be called The Brits Are Coming!, as Etamae – Eta to her friends – also hails from the UK 🙂 .

In truth, Eta is an extraordinary digital artist. her work, whether landscape or avatar  is both unique and distinctive in its presentation. Using digital technique and Second Life capabilities such as Advanced Lighting, Eta never fails to produce utterly captivating pieces that never fail to hold the eye.

My photography and art is exclusive to SL, taken from the things she has seen and loved which have inspired her to transform them into something else – not more, nor better – simply different. As an avid SL traveller, I truly enjoy the inventiveness our double click world inspires.

Mesh creators like Mistero Hfeng, Bryn Oh, Toysoldier Thor, CioTToLiNa Xue, Theda Tammas, Tralala Loordes, Cherry Manga, Meilo Minotaur, Maru Kado, Safar Fiertze, Tansee and Harry Cover to name just a few provide me with subject matter and inspiration, and I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoyed creating it.

– Etamae

For my part, I remain genuinely flattered that people find my work worthy of a focused exhibition. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I don’t regard my images as art, but rather as illustrations for this blog; I don’t pretend to understand anything more than some of the basics of photography, and my post-processing skill – although they have grown somewhat over the years – remain limited when it comes to present any of them as “art”.

The Exhibition space is on the upper floor of the gallery, giving visitors the opportunity to appreciate Raging’s own art on the ground floor, adding a further attraction to any visit.

The official opening for A Celebration of the Arts is 11:00 SLT on Saturday June 6th, and Eta and I hope you’ll join us. If not, I certainly hope you’ll visit the exhibition during the month it is open; my thanks to Raging for the invitation and opportunity to present at her gallery.

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Raging Graphix Gallery (Heatherwood, rated Moderate)

 

 

 

Love & Love Art Gallery is, for me, a new venue for art in Second Life. Curated by Lylaya Love (lylaya), and co-founded by her and her partner Bohemio Love (Bohemi0), the gallery occupies a pristine 3-storey building set with a 4096 sq metre parcel set out with a small, tidy garden space before it.

At the time of my visit, the ground floor space of the gallery was not in use – I’ve no idea if it will offer future exhibitions – with a teleport offering the way up to the upper two floors.

On the first of these, Cornelia Augusta (cornelia Longfall) presents Kaleidoscope of Souls, an exhibition of avatar studies across the floor’s two halls and set within an environment that is best appreciated with the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled (Graphics → Preferences → check Advanced Lighting Model if required – note that you do not have to enable Shadows as well, so the rendering impact should hopefully be minimal).

The studies appear to be of Cornelia and her friends / those close to her, and are largely “traditional” in that they offer a head and shoulders view of the subject. They are refreshing in that they appear to have had little or no post-processing. On the one hand, this perhaps means these portraits are not so vibrantly life-like as avatar studies produced by others: skin toning may not appear to be flesh-like, features have not been re-touched or enhanced to add further “humanness” before the avatar’s natural look, etc.

However, on the other hand, they allow us to see the avatars as they are, something that imbues them with their own distinct life, rather than being seen as an image attempting to mimic life. Thus, it is possible to discern within them more of their own nature mixed with the nature of their creators, rather than seeing an interpretation of that mix of natures as perceived by the artist as a result of extensive re-editing.

On the upper floor is an exhibition of physical world paintings by Oblomov (Jos Bookmite) entitled Pesci (Fishes).

As the name implies, the paintings here are very much about fishes – although they are not all piscine in nature; there are also molluscs, sea-snails and mermaids waiting to be seen. Set within an environment suggestive of the sea floor, these are highly stylised sea creatures, some of which clearly have a life of their own waiting to be found in their expressive forms / faces suggestive of a range of emotions, with some of the fish looking very human in their expressions.

Colourful, happy, mischievous, and in places, slightly sinister, these paintings all have their own stories waiting to be discerned by visitors.

Two very different art displays within a single gallery space, joined by their own unique approaches to their subjects, Kaleidoscope of Souls and Pesci are equally enjoyable exhibitions. As they opened in mid-May, I’m not entirely sure how long they will both be around, so do make a point of visiting the gallery sooner rather than later, just in case.

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• Love and Love Art Gallery (Sexy Sands, rated Adult)

FionaFei invited me to visit her new installation that opened on May 29th at the Hannington Endowment for the Arts (HEA). Entitled I Had a Dream, And You Were There, it is a reflection of thoughts and feelings that may come upon us unbidden, be it through dream or through finding an object or hearing a sound or seeing an image or event, that bring to mind someone now gone from our lives.

Set as a dream-like forest, the trees rendered in Fiona’s familiar ink wash black on white, that we’re invited to explore. Within it, the ground is white, as if mist is sliding through the trees, brushed ferns grouping around the base of trunks. Among these trees are park benches offering places to sit in contemplation.

On or near the benches are bright red objects: an alarm clock here, a scarf draped over a branch there, a hat hanging on the back of a bench, a flittering butterfly or two, and so on. All of them are precisely the kind of thing liable to trigger a sudden memory of someone once close to us. Touch them, and they will even offer a specific memory in local chat.

For those who have lost someone from their physical or virtual lives, I Had a Dream is liable to be an evocative visit. And by “lost”, I don’t necessarily mean the individual memory recalls has passed away; we lose people from our lives in a wide variety of ways: friendships form and end; closeness fades as physical distance grows; relationships naturally shift in desire, want and need, and so on. Even so, memories of their presence and former closeness can remain with us long after a parting of the ways have come and can – no matter how the parting came about – still come to the fore in the most unexpected ways.

It’s also important not to ascribe the installation to a specific loss on Fiona’s part. As she states in the introduction to the installation:

It is a creative manifestation of thinking about someone and wishing that they were here … The artwork is not about any specific person.

– FionaFei

Simply and artistically presented, I Had a Dream… is an installation that can unfold to reveal considerable emotional depth, echoing as it does, feelings that many, if not all of us, have felt in our adult lives.

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• Hannington Endowment for the Arts (Xeltentat Enterprises, rated Moderate)

Wednesday, May 20th marked the opening of a new ensemble exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli Gallery, curated by Aneli Abeyante, together with a new look / set-up for the gallery’s spaces.

For those familiar with the gallery’s former “indoor” futuristic look with the display spaces all physically linked, the current appearance is very different. On the ground sits a warehouse-like building tucked into a corner of Virtual Holland. With an outdoor seating area / event space, the warehouse offers two routes to the exhibition spaces.

The gallery spaces are now located in the sky overhead and connected via teleport both with the ground and one to the next. These new spaces actually gives artists more physical space with their exhibitions / installations, including the freedom to add the the décor / environment in which they are displaying their art.

The teleports, as noted, take two forms: individual Anywhere Doors that, from the ground, take visitors directly to a specific exhibit / installation. These also connect one exhibit to another, if a little randomly in terms of you don’t know where you’re going next when you open a Door on any given exhibition space.

For those who prefer to select where they are going, the gallery spaces and the ground level are also connected via teleport disks that will offer a menu of destinations within the gallery, allowing visitors to pick where they go next.

The artists displaying at the gallery comprise:

• Ilyra Chardin, with The New Normal: The Date, 3D installation offering a commentary on the current state of physical / social isolation resulting from the SARS-COV-2 pandemic.
• Slatan Dryke, with a redux of his installation, Crumbs from my Nightmares.
• Thoth Jantzen, presenting Vortex one of his  immersive, mesmerising media shows.
• Nox Kirax, with a set of his portraits in which visitors are invited to consider the expressions on the faces of the subjects and reflect on what they might be saying.
• Desy Magic, offering a captivating selection of avatar studies, paintings, and 3D sculpture.
• Sophie Marie Sinclair, presenting a number of her physical world nude and abstract paintings.
• Sweet Susanowa, with an intriguing selection of photographs and abstracted paintings / drawings.

Together, they make for an engaging mix of art and expression. I admit to having a certain attraction to Thoth’s work and Desy’s images that tends to make me lean towards them, and that is true here -although admittedly, a still image of Thoth’s work really doesn’t convey it, it really does have to be experienced.

Ilyra’s piece is certainly of the times, and the staging of a couple sharing a romantic meal  whilst keeping strictly to their own apartments, and they sharing it whilst separated by the gap between their balconies is certainly of the time, whilst Slatan’s redux offers the chance to re-visit an installation that challenged introspection the first time around.

Nox Kirax, Sophie Marie Sinclair and Sweet Susanowa was three “new” artists for me, inasmuch as I’m not aware of seeing their work in the past, and all three offer something entirely engaging, in very different ways to one another. I particularly found the portraits by Nox to hold my attention in full, while the sheer diversity of imagery with Sweet’s exhibit offer a richness of imagery and a different style of narrative within them, while Sophie’s nudes have a wonderfully fluid feel to them that is suggestive of life and vitality.

A further engaging ensemble of exhibitions well worth seeing.

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• La Maison d’Aneli (Virtual Holland, rated Moderate)

I love to paint nature in the abstract form as I feel it. I try to capture that energy, the movement, of the natural world. My innate and incessant feeling and filtering energy is what drives me to paint the crazy way I do.

– Shakti Adored

I make no apology for covering another art exhibition connected with Kultivate Magazine and galleries just a couple of days after my coverage of the Kultivate Sensuality exhibition. While I may well be a contributing writer for Kultivate, this is not favouritism on my part; simply put, the Kultivate galleries cover an enticingly broad range of art and artists that is is entirely natural to be drawn back to shows there. This is certainly true of the May / June exhibition at Kultivate’s The Loft Gallery that opens at 13:00 SLT on Tuesday, May 26th 2020, featuring the extraordinary abstract work of Shakti Adored.

A 10+ year resident of Second Life, Shakti is perhaps best known to many as the curator of a range of art projects and galleries in Second Life over the years, including some exquisite exhibitions at Angel Manor. However, she is an accomplished artist in the physical world, with a lean towards abstraction, as the quote at the top of this piece notes.

However, far from being “crazy”, Shakti’s use of the abstract form is actually enticing, as can be seen within the twelve pieces she has selected for The Art of Shakti Adored. Rich in colour and tone, these may at first appear to be pure abstractions, but each carries within it a strong sense of theme and narrative that offers further depth to what are already captivating pieces.

This sense of narrative may be more obvious in some than with others: the titular character of Funny Bunny, for example, is unmistakable as his / she raises an inquisitive nose to take a sniff at a plant leaf – or is it a feather? – immediately drawing us into the picture, as it is hard not to find the bunny’s presence in the painting adorable, further adding to its appeal. Alongside of it, Fea Lights might at first appear to be more chaotic, but the two smoke-like presences quickly give it form, opening a story of sprites at play (or dancing) in an autumnal woods.

Meanwhile, Moving Forward offers a rich mixture: an abstracted watercolour / ink wash backdrop that almost suggests a collage, but within which the eye can discern certain things (in my case, the bent trunk of a palm tree, the suggestion of a conch shell and a pine cone, and a sense of flowing water to name but three), overlaid with more prominent elements (a rabbit once again), plus a hand holding what might be an infinity symbol). All of this combines to offer a sense of motion through both layering and motifs).

Creativity can often be a form of catharsis for the creator / artist. This is certainly true with Shakti’s work, as she notes herself. Her art, with the aid of a garden bath tub has allow her relief from the pain of fibromyalgia. At the same time, her discovery of Second Life offered her a way to escape the pain of a harmful marriage to a world that allowed her life-long love of art to bloom, first through her work in curating art galleries and projects.

Having recently returned to painting herself, Shakti now finds art as means to continue the healing process that continues on after the ending of her former marriage, that ability to overcome the discomfort of her medical condition, and a means to express the teaching of her other interests, such as Reiki, in a visual way, with Second Life offering her the means to present her work.

Thus, The Art of Shakti Adored is not only a expression of Shakti’s art, but very much an expression of her journey through life – physical and virtual – in which she is inviting us to share.This makes it a truly engaging exhibition that should not be missed. 

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• Kultivate The Loft Gallery (rated Moderate)