Tag: Cica Ghost

The word ordinary tends to bring with it negative connotations, a suggestion that well, something might be OK, but really, something else could be far better., but until it comes along we’ll just have to make do. Even the dictionary defines the word in bland, downturned terms:

Ordinary /ôr′dn-ĕr″ē/ – adjective: Commonly encountered; usual; of no exceptional ability, degree, or quality; average; Not particularly good; not better than average.

But the fact is, ordinary can equally be positive in connotation: an ordinary route might sound like the same old, same old – but in fact it can give a rhythm to our daily lives, helping us get through the rush and rut more easily than having to panic thanks to unforeseen crises; the same is true for an “ordinary” day, when we can forget the pressures of work and the world and just be, simply sitting back, relaxing and let the minutes and hours pass at their own pace, allowing us time to breathe, to talk to the cat or the garden flowers or just be.

For March, Cica Ghost reminds us of this through her installation Ordinary Day, which opened on March 6th, 2026. It presents  a peaceful setting under a peaceful, if grey (or perhaps “ordinary” might be the right term!), where nothing happens unless we want it to. In the garden, a big cat innocently eyes a couple of Mouse cars (just sit on one if you wish and use the arrow keys to move / steer), and is happy to watch them at play,

Within this garden, flower-topped palms rise, casting their fronds wide to provide any shelter that might be required, whilst stone circles mark flowerbeds with more blue plants and tall grass. A stack of not exactly ordinary buildings rises towards the back of the setting, various stairways and a ramp climbing up into them.

Most of the latter lead to points of interest and curio – places to sit, including one where those so minded can maybe cheer up a sad-looking monster; a rooftop  plaza where visitors might join some of Cica’s hand-drawn spiders as they dance a jig as an equally hand-drawn Cica plays her fiddle; or pay a visit to a snail sitting on a ledge. One of the sit points might be a little hard to reach, but does offer a view down over the garden the the cat.

Ordinary day doesn’t carry any deep message or meaning, it simply reminds us that really there is nothing wrong with “ordinary” day or with “ordinary” things or in being “ordinary”. The reality it, that we need time off and days which we can make our own, because those days might appear “ordinary” to the world, but for us they are opportunities for magic to happen – be it dancing a jig, sitting at a table, or racing a mouse car around a garden, or even contemplating our sorrows and finding a way past them.

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• Ordinary Day (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

February has arrived, and with it all the romance (and frequent commercialisation- although in this day and age, what special holiday or day isn’t a commercial opportunity first? In the UK it only took many stores to open on Boxing Day  – the day after Christmas Day if you’re not familiar with the term – for customers to find shelves stocked with love hearts, Valentine’s chocolate selections – and, worse, Easter eggs, fluffy Easter bunnies and Easter bears) of Valentine’s Day.

Fortunately, there are many who are here to offer more fulfilling celebrations of love, romance and Valentine’s Day, including Cica Ghost, who offers a light, fun and engaging view of the month of romance with Oh My Heart.

Filled with semi-anthropomorphic hearts, cuddly bears and rabbits, lovable elephants and a Queen of Hearts who is most definitely not of the “Off with their heads!” type. All are gathered within a landscape filled with giant green flowers, looping vines and areas of red-and-black chequerboard patterns, complete tower and wall of red-and-black cubes with blocky rocky upthrusts.

The red heart characters stand on booted feet and appear to be without a care in the world. Their houses are also heart-shaped, whilst the bears and rabbits cuddle red hearts or offer heart symbols to passing visitors. Meanwhile, the Queen of Hearts presides over all from the height of her fairy tale castle up on a mesa reached by stone steps. Black hearts offer dances throughout and sit-points  – some obvious, others perhaps not so obvious, so be sure to mouseover! – are also scattered about, this is another light and delightful setting for anyone to enjoy, whether a romantic or not.

The setting comes with a quote from humourist, playwright, poet and author Alan Alexander Milne. It was two tomes of his verses – When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927) – through which he found his literary métier: writing for children. Thus came the two volumes for which he is perhaps most famous: Winnie the Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Whilst ostensibly written for children, notably his son, Christopher Robin Milne, these two works are rich in observations about human behaviour, gentle truths on how to behave and what in life to treasure. It is from the latter that Cica has chosen her quote:

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.  

– A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

There is a marvellous depth of truth and meaning in this single sentence; so much so that likely it means something different to many of us. Given this, I’m not about to churn out a litany of interpretations. You can do that for yourself both before and after visiting Oh My Heart. What I will say is that I felt especially drawn to this installation because of the quote: Milne is an author I try to read once every 12-18 months (at least the Winnie the Pooh books). I simply love Milne’s kindness and insights.

So, why not go an enjoy Oh My Heart, and then, if you’ve never read the Milne’s two volumes of Winnie the Pooh’s adventures with his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, or haven’t read them in a while / as an adult, I urge you to consider doing so as well.

SLurl Details

• Oh My Heart (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

January 2026 is here and with it, a visit to Cica Ghost’s Mysterious Isle to visit her latest installation there, Woodland. The setting comes with a quote oft attributed to the Master of the Imagination, Walt Disney:

If you can dream it, you can do it.

The reality of the world is that there is no evidence Disney ever uttered these words. Rather, the first public attribution of the quote to anything related to Disney appears to have come in 1983, seventeen years after his passing. They appeared in a script used in Horizons (1983-1994), an animatronic attraction at the EPCOT Centre (as it was then) at Walt Disney World, Florida.

Exactly who coined the phrase – script writer Tom Fitzgerald or copywriter Sheralyn Silverstein – remains a topic of debate; it only became associated with Disney himself much later – in 2007, when it was used in a DVD series on the Disney phenomena and the marketing machine at Disney wasted no time in acquiring the idea the words were Walt’s – and started marketing them at every turn.

However, all this be as it may, the idea the words convey is totally applicable to Cica’s work. Month after month she presents us with installations grown from her dreams and made into living experiences for us to enjoy. Some of her works have carried subtle messages; some have offered new takes on various folk tales and fables; many have been twists of whimsy and lightness, speaking to  Cica’s spirit of positivity; some have been perhaps pensive and forward-looking. All have have had deep roots in the dreams of a creative imagination – and such is the case here.

The term “woodland” probably conjures images of trees heavy in leaf, grassy trials meandering between their trucks, sprinkled with bursts of flowers, light and shadow rippling and playing over them as a breeze moves the boughs overhead. A place where creatures, possibly stranger or exotic, and insects reside, all going about their business.

The flowers and the creatures and insects are all within Cica’s Woodland, and many of them are exotic – a chameleon-like lizard, stick insects and more. However, in a twist of imagination they all appear to be carved or grown from wood, and the majority of “trees” of this woodland are all houses and buildings, many of them rising slender and tall, like tree trunks with the unblinking eyes of windows cut into them, others offering a unique take on the windmill. All stand four-square on stout legs as if ready to set out across the surrounding hills.

Actual trees do also grow here, but the entire installation speaks to a place that is literally wood land. Even the brown and greying soil carries a woodgrain, the hills exhibiting a gridwork against which the grain laps, as if attempting to rise up and cover them.

All of this – creatures, houses, flowers, trees, is being watched over by a satisfied King (or Prince?) Frog. Is he responsible for this wonderland? If so, why? That’s a dream for your imagination to create, perhaps as you try the dances scattered across the setting and wander among the land’s friendly inhabitants.

SLurl Details

• Woodland (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

December has arrived, and with it, the holiday season has popped its head over the horizon, and I’m more in the mood to start touring winter-themed locations in Second Life. By coincidence, Cica Ghost dropped me a line to let me know she’d just opened her end-of-year setting in her homestead region of Mysterious Isle, thus giving me my first outing to a winter setting to mark the approaching year-end.

Called, appropriately enough, Winter, the setting comes with a quote from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, first published in 1922. Eliot is, again entirely coincidentally, one of my favourite writers of the 20th century, and it is not unfair to view The Wate Land a one of the most important poems of that century (and this, if you want my opinion, remains true for this current century as well 🙂 ).

Given my love of Eliot, there is a danger here of me getting side-tracked into an examination of Burial of the Dead, from which the quote has been taken:

Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow

– TS Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

However, I’ll spare you any such thing, because the focus here is on these particular lines, not the poem as a whole or even part of it from which they have been taken.

In their standalone state, these two lines perhaps encompass ideas of the joyous warmth we can so often feel when seeing a snow-covered landscape, together with the opportunities for us to forgot the worries and concerns of life whilst enjoying unique forms of play and fun snow can encourage – or simply by walking through snow and appreciating the quiet beauty it so often brings.

Befitting this, Cica presents a snowy landscape intended for wandering and finding its wonders. The latter particularly come in the form of Cica’s engaging creatures, all of which are – once again, appropriately – white. In this, what I found particularly attractive about Winter is its monochrome-like environment, one in which I’d recommend enabling Shadows in your viewer if your computer is up to it.

This build does offer fewer places to sit than many of Cica’s previous installations through the year;  to me, this encourages the idea of walking through this winter wonderland, rather than jumping from sit point to sit point, this making it more enjoyable. In this Winter is an easy-going, happy setting in keeping with the season for many of us, allowing us to ease into the winter months, the holiday season and prepare ourselves for the year’s end.

SLurl Details

• Winter (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

It was off to Mysterious Isle for me after receiving an invitation to visit the November 2025 installation by Cica Ghost, entitled simply 100th. The name reflects the fact that this is Cica’s 100th solo installation in SL – and I’ve been fortunate to cover more than 90 of of them down the years (as well as Cica’s collaborations with Bryn Oh and her special exhibitions for charity events), and it has been a genuine delight to do so.

The installation is framed by a quote from editorial cartoonist, humourist, Monday columnist, and Promotional Manager of The Trenton Times for over 30 years, Frank Tyger. It’s a quote that perhaps aptly sums up Cica and her art:

When you like your work, every day is a holiday.

For me, visiting Cica’s installations generally tends to be something of a holiday, as so many of them naturally evoke a sense of fun and happiness which can be infectious, and clearly born of Cica’s own sense of fun and adventure. Even those which have in their time encouraged deeper exploration of themes and ideas have demonstrated a gentle tickling of one’s thought processes and light nudging of emotions rather than demanding we sit up and take note.

Cica’s 100th perhaps offers an added layer of that sense of fun for us to share, presenting as a does a setting and inhabitants looking like they have all be moulded from plasticine (or playdough / playdoh if you prefer) which immediately transports one to memories of younger years and creative expression when rolling, squishing, shaping and pressing lumps of either material to create worlds and creatures of our imaginations; places and things of riotous bright colours, sometimes additionally decorated with things “borrowed” from around the house (in this case – buttons!).

100th is a genuinely joyous little setting which celebrates some much we’ve come to associate with Cica’s work: fantastical creatures and insects, funny little houses, blooming flowers, cats and other animals (I particularly like the cow apparently wearing blue wellies!), together with Cica’s signature interactive elements: places to sit or dance, little vehicles to rumble around in and – tucked away and waiting to be found – a little gift from Cica.  All of which is presided over by a very happy Sun looking down from a sky in which dough-like clouds serenely float.

As with all of Cica’s installations, I recommend viewing 100th using the local Shared Environment, and if your system can handle them, with Shadows enabled. And if you’d like to look back through all of Cica’s installations over the years, then why not take a look at her Flickr photostream as well?

For may part, I’ll simply congratulate Cica on reaching her 100th solo installation, and raise a glass in the hope of seeing my more!

SLurl Details

• 100th (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

It’s October, which means Halloween sits a-waiting at the end of the month. I’ve noted on numerous occasions that I’m not a fan on the modern take on the celebration, but within Second Life I do like to take a look at region settings and installations that offer a take on things that is a little different to the usual. Such is the case with Cica Ghost’s October installation: Happy Halloween, which she invited me to visit as it opened on October 1st, 2025.

Offered largely in monochrome (the pumpkins and stars being the exception here!), Happy Halloween offers much that might be associated with the modern take on Halloween – but also perhaps applies more broadly to generally spookiness and fun. It even carries with it what might be seen as a little nod towards Tim Burton.

The main Landing Point sits in the sky over Cica’s regions of Mysterious Isle, where can be found the usual request about using the local environment settings, a link to Cica’s on-line store and a tombstone teleport down to the installation proper. The latter delivers visitors to a setting caught under the same star-dusted sky as seen from the Landing Point, complete with a crescent Moon low in the sky.

The quote accompanying the build is a popular take on a line made famous by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first inaugural address. At the time, America we deep into the Depression, and his words in that address were both solemn and intended to give hope and reassurance. He certainly did not originate the phrase in question – various forms of it have been recorded since the 16th century. The version Cica uses gives it a decidedly humorous little twist:

The only thing we have to fear is FEAR itself – and spiders.

And there are certainly spiders to be found here. They grin and bounce among flowers with equally toothy grins, or sit on stalks as if they are themselves flowers. They share the landscape with bat plants and star plants, all growing out of a dusty ground with tall hills all around, their surfaces pockmarked like the surface of a moon. In places the dust gives way to a checkerboard effect, whilst scattered across the entire setting are bare trees, odd little houses and all the local denizens.

The latter come in many forms: monsters who appear to be out for a lark more than to frighten, ghosts who fade in-and-out of view, black cats, giant pumpkins, crows… the list goes on, and I really don’t want to spoil things by saying too much here – other than the little touch of Tim Burton might be seen in the people also scattered across (over over in one case) the setting as they go about their evening’s business.

As always with most of Cica’s builds, there are various opportunities to be found for interaction within Happy Halloween, and plenty of opportunities for photography and smiles.

SLurl Details

• Happy Halloween (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)