Tag: Cica Ghost

July 19th, saw the opening of Cica Ghost’s latest installation in Second Life, to which she kindly sent me an invitation to pop in and see. Entitled Visiting a Friend, it presents a bright colourful setting in keeping with the summer time, one mindful of a coastal region and memories of visiting the beach (or sea-side, if your prefer).

This is a place of grass and sand, where rowing and fishing boats bob on the waves and storks wade the shallows. Sand dunes rise from the grass, some of them topped by sand castles, and one by a row of brightly-painted sea-side houses reached by a ladder and home to some of Cica’s art, whilst overhead giant balloons (on which you can sit) float.

Watching over all of this is a – literal – blue whale complete with a little house on its head. The latter is a cosy little place with a comfortable bed and happy flower in a pot and a slightly curious cat-like pet. It appears to be the home of a little duck going by the picture on the wall and the little chap outside.

Also watching over the setting is a sand-built lighthouse atop another sand dune complete with the keeper’s cottage on the neighbouring dune, reach via a bridge. However, it is at the top of the lighthouse that accommodation might be found – albeit watched over by a toothy spider.

It’s all a happy scene, one not even spoiled by the presence of an erupting volcano given it seems more intent on throwing firework-like trails up into the air rather than bringing forth lava. All of it sits under a starry sky in keeping with the quote Cica has chosen for the installation:

Good friends are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you know they are there.

And who – or what – is the (good) friend(s) in question? Well, anyone who went to the beach during childhood likely has happy memories of those occasions; memories which are as much comforting friends as they are recollections. And like the stars in the sky, while we might not always think of them, they are always there, just waiting for us to remember.

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• Visiting A Friend (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

At the start of the weekend, Cica Ghost sent me – as she always kindly does – to visit her latest installation for 2026. Entitled Secret Tribe, it is a setting which seeks to quite literally elevate us by offering a walk around multiple tall platforms linked together by way of bridge-like walkways gently hung between them. Ladders from the ground climb up to these platforms, allowing visitors to reach them after descending from the Landing Point.

The platforms are either roughly circular or rectangular in shape, each with a fence border. Like pretty much everything within the setting, the platforms are made of wood, as are the oddly-shaped houses sitting on some of them. These in turn have something of an  oddly-shaped acorn look about them.

The land beneath the platforms and walkways shares the colour of the wood, but is hardly barren; flowers grow across it, offering starbursts of soft colour. The beauty of the flowers is are a little offset by the roots also rising from the ground and curling their across it before burrowing back under the surface like troops of worms wriggling across the landscape.

This is a place that is home to fantastical wooden creatures, from beetles inviting you to dance on one of the platforms, to a giant hollow-bellied horse and a strange cat partnering with a giant bird. Among all of these, a trio of ordinary geese are the ones who look out of place!

This is perhaps the point of the setting: a presentation of the fantastical, the unknown – the strange; creatures at ease with one another – the bird and the cat -; who work with and respect the nature things at their disposal, carving their homes from wood. To be united in their life and pursuits, to be at piece with their environment. It’s a feeling amplified by the text – of unknown origin – Cica has chosen to describe Secret Tribe:

Not connected by blood but rather by energy.
Those who are there for you through the good and the bad, those who are patient, and those who are
supportive of you and your dreams.

With places to sit, opportunities to dance, Cica once again offers a setting that mixes positivity and emotions, a place we can share and enjoy.

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• Spirit Tribe (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

I am, it has to be said, something of an arachnophobe. Small, little, or tiny spiders – they’re perfectly fine. Larger varieties – Well, keep them away from me. Put a really large spider in front of me – say a tarantula / bird-eating spider, or even the UK’s cardinal, tube-web or nursery-web spider – and I can guarantee I’ll be one of the first out of the door and moving at a reasonably fast pace.

I mention this because for May 2026, Cica Ghost brings us the curious combination of Robots and Spiders. But fortunately for those of us with any degree of fear when it comes to spiders, those present in Cica’s work are disarmingly friendly-looking and not at all what you might otherwise imagine.

These are spiders which appear to live on a world very different from our own; one they share with a bunch of seemingly happy-go-lucky robots. In fact, like the robots, they appear to be artificial in nature, made of metal parts – bulbs, tubes, poles, etc., suggesting they have specific purposes, although their eyes remain very human and expressive.

Rather than hunting prey or weaving webs, these spiders appear content to live within the metal town they share with the robots and a handful of metallic gusenica (caterpillars). The latter are certainly a happy-smiley lot, and not in the least afraid of the spiders, even if the latter on our world often see caterpillars as prey.

The robots, meanwhile, are by far the most anthropomorphic-looking (unsurprisingly)of the locals. Admittedly, some do lack arms and others look like they have old Mac computer cases or arcade game consoles for bodies (something which raises a possibly interesting question about their lineage!). However, they also appear to be a welcoming, happy bunch, ready to wave a greeting rather than snap at you with the claws that might occupy the ends of the arms they might have.

As noted, all of these creations live in a metal town in which some of the houses look like they might have once served as the heads of very big robots: hemispherical units with two eye-like windows to the side one on either side which may have once housed hearing units, and a large opening cut into the remaining side to form a doorway. Other parts of the town look like they are components of some large electrical or industrial installation or to have been made from metal boxes, and a couple of places look more akin to cabins or similar found here on Earth, making for an eclectic mix.

Rounded out by an appropriate quote from Dr. Seuss, Robots and Spiders is an unusual and light-hearted artistic fantasy.

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• Robots and Spiders (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

April 2026 is the month of Artemis 2 (well, at least the first ten days are!), which will see a crew of four pass around the Moon before returning to Earth In the process the crew will set a new record for the furthest any humans have travelled beyond Earth thus far – some 406,773 kilometres, just breaking the record of 397,848 kilometres set by Apollo 13 during its aborted mission to the Moon in April 1970,

As such, it is thoroughly appropriate that whether by accident or design, Cica Ghost is using April to take us on a trip into space and to her Happy Planet.

Set against the backdrop of night, from which a large Moon (or possibly a planetary twin) literally watches over everything via the circular (and eye-like) blue sea covering a far portion of its otherwise dull browny nearside, this is a place of fantastical wonder, backed by a truth from US cartoonist Lynda Barry:

We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.

In other words fantasy and our use of it is more about presenting us with opportunities to pause and renew our strengths and abilities in the face of a reality which can oftentimes be harsh or unpredictable – or both – in its daily nature, rather than being a simply a crutch for helping us cope – as the unimaginative in nature have often claimed.

And fantasy can be both wonderfully creative and fun – as Happy Planet, with its strange but in some cases familiar creatures and inhabitants. From cats with antennae to almost slug-like beings oddly mindful of Gru’s Minions, occupying the rocky landscape and possibly living in the rock formations which appear to have holes cut into them to form interior spaces complete with windows and chimneys, this is clearly a place born of a creative and fantasy-oriented mind, rich in strange flora.

Some of these semi-sluggy (if you will) locals are not confined to the ground, but zip around overhead in personal flying saucers, deftly missing asteroids which –  to unabashedly steal from Douglas Adams – hang in the air exactly the same way as bricks don’t. And you can join the flying locals; located in the setting is a free flying saucer giver. Simply claim one, add it from inventory and take flight.

For those who prefer the alien equivalent of terra firma, there are plenty of opportunities for ground (or slightly elevate, thanks to re various raised paths) exploration, which will also reveal interactive dance spots scattered around the setting. I didn’t find any sit points while mousing over things, but I may have missed them. Either way, there is no mistaking Happy Planet is a happy place to be.

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• Happy Planet (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

 

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.

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• Oh My Heart (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)