Tag: Cica Ghost

February 2024 brings us a touch more whimsy from Cica Ghost, with the opening of her latest installation, Colourado. Continuing the theme found within several of her more recent installations, Colourado presents a seen designed to raise a smile and allow with child within each of us a little room to come out and play, a sentiment reinforced by the quote accompanying the installation:

Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. 

– Terry Pratchett

It’s a sentiment I find increasingly true with the passing years, although I also admit that I try to live by Ashleigh Brilliant’s words as well¹, so whimsy and fun always appeal.

Within the installation, we are presented with a sleepy village with its houses scattered among open spaces and high plateaux and peaks which go some way to explaining Cica’s play on the installation’s name and that of a certain US state (the name also obviously reflecting the setting’s colour palette). And when I say “sleepy”, I’m not writing figuratively; the houses all wear curly night caps of the kind beloved of cartoon, and some have a look about them suggesting they are ready to toddle off to the land of dreams (particularly those with wide-open fronts, even if the large space is really for people to practice balancing on the gently pogoing stools within).

On first encountering them, I thought the denizens of this little hamlet were fruit. I think this was because the first ones I encountered were purple in colour and they put me in mind of the adverts for a certain blackcurrant cordial drink we have in the UK (and which may well be known by other names elsewhere). However, they are in fact potatoes, small and (very) large, and are far from limited to being purple in colour. These happy villagers share there space with a mix of wildlife, all of whom appear to be equally at home in the village and its surroundings, and equally friendly.

As is common with Cica’s installations, there are several interactive elements, so you can sit and chat with a potato, try the stool balancing mentioned above, express your joy through dance under the eaves of house or the balloon-like trees, climb and cross ladders – you can also go for a spin if you wish, although wearing a swimming costume and being prepared to hold you breath are both advisable!

SLurl Details

• Colourado (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

1. “The older you get, the more important it is to not act your age.”

October 2023 sees artist and builder Cica Ghost presents something a little different for Second Life users to enjoy. In Cica’s Workshop we find not a new fantastical landscape or garden or alien world or other setting where our imaginations might go wandering through thoughts of faerie and folk tales or memories of childhood or other such avenues. Instead, it sits as a kind of living gallery, a celebration of many of Cica’s creations down the years, and a place where if we’re so-minded we can pick up copies of her work either directly or via convenient links to her Marketplace listings.

For those with a long familiar with Cica’s work, this is a chance to take a walk down memory lane – which I found myself doing. For example, throughout the region-wide exhibition there are her 2D drawings, large and small, which carry with them memories of installations such as The Visitors (2014), wherein she brought a flavour of occupancy to the former art centre The Lost Town – La Città Perduta. These figures also offer a reflection of her monochrome characters from her 2012 installation Cica, which rightly brought her widespread attention in Second Life, and also 2013’s Ghostville, which I believe is the first of Cica’s installations I ever blogged.

Meanwhile, up on the flat crown of a hill sits a pastel cream garden and little house. The latter brings to mind many of Cica’s builds stretching all the way back to around 2014 as well, when her Little Village made its first appearance. These little houses, varying in size whilst often retaining their general looks and proportions, have gone on to appear in many of Cica’s designs, such as Moonlight (2016, and still one of my favourites among Cica’s installations) and very uniquely within Drawn Town (2019).

This is a place inhabited by many of Cica’s animal and creature creations, from her ever-popular sheep and cows, through to her dinosaurs, which I think first appeared within 20022’s Dinosaurs and Coconuts, her residents of Burlap, and cast from Monsters and ever-friendly Elephants (all from 2020) – and more besides.

In addition, several new characters are waiting to befriend visitors, whilst the installation also includes many items from Cica’s furniture range for those looking for something a little different for home and / or garden. And if you fancy having a near-avatar scale sandcastle for your beach or spending a little time in an anti-gravity cage – Cica has you covered.

Even for those who may be relatively new to Cica’s work and her marvellous imagination, Cica’s Workshop offers and lot to see and enjoy – and possibly purchase along the way. As such, and while it may not be a “traditional” Cica presentation, it nevertheless shouldn’t be missed.

SLurl Details

• Cica’s Workshop (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

For September, Cica Ghost brings us Nostalgia, a sepia-tingled world offering hints of some of her past installation and work whilst offering something entirely new for people to explore and photograph.

Spread under a custom EEP environment designed by Cica, and which offers something like an inverted lunar surface of s skyscape, the setting comprises a mix of flat plains and doughy hills rising like dumplings or lumpy loaves, their faces checkerboard of little squares. Both their strange ground cover brings to mind faint echoes from past builds. Creatures and balloons – further motifs those familiar with Cica’s work will recognise   – are also awaiting befriending and discovering.

Many of the former are giant insects and garden creatures. However, rather than being of a variety you might reasonably find in your own garden (other than being somewhat scaled-up), some of these are creatures with a decidedly Steampunkian edge to them; others are – although still large – more “natural in their looks – such as a the large snake and its smaller cousin, happy to watch the comings and goings, and still others are as strange as the armoured insects and come in a variety of sizes.

Ladders – also a feature of Cica’s builds – might be found here, some of them giving a purpose to the balloons as they hold them aloft so they might form horizontal companionways running between the tops of some of the hills, overring visitors the means to pass between them without the need to descend into the plains and valleys below.

Within the lowlands (and on some of the hills) expressive little houses await, their sloping roofs with curled eaves, wide open doorways with curtained windows above and to either side, the carry an expression of surprise which is intriguing. Or perhaps they are all singing with unheard voices, whilst shaded by oversized parasols.

Also rising from the tops of the hills are strange structures.  Some are held aloft any pipes / legs, others looks like gigantic plant pots. All have the feeling of being placed here by giant hands – but that they are is up to our imaginations to decide. Most offer another familiar trait common to Cica’s designs: places to sit, either on your own or with a friend. Elsewhere, again in keeping with #Cica’s work are places to dance and have a little fun.

The above really only touches on the familiar-yet-unique look Nostalgia exudes, making a visit a necessity of you’re to appreciate it all. Should you do so, keep an eye out for Cica’s gift to visitors. It is guarded by one of her creatures – but it’s a friendly character, despite its looks, and will do you no harm when you approach it.

Once again a trip into Cica’s rich imagination, one which might perhaps stir memories of childhood fairy stories (or, given the potential for multiple interpretations of the expressions on the “faces” of the houses – nightmares) which the passage of time may well have dulled in terms of whatever metaphorical colour they many have had during childhood, much like the sepia tinge Cica has given Nostalgia. As ever, a fun and engaging build

SLurl Details

• Nostalgia (Mysterious Isle, rated Moderate)

Cica carries us to the magic of summertime night skies and coastal retreats with her installation Summer Night, which opened on June 16th, 2023. It’s another happy setting, rich in content and details that is light-hearted and intended to lift the spirit. utilising Cica’s custom textures to paint the terrain, the installation is set out on five landmasses of varying heights, between which, like an inlet or bay, a body of water flows.

The first of these landmasses sits as the landing point and presents itself as a broad deck or boardwalk, trees growing in the corners, and a huge fish spelunking down one hole in the boards and rising from a second, head and tail visible, but body lost to sight. a ladder spans the water horizontally to reach the local lighthouse, whilst a second ladder further to one side rises up to the decking covering the top of a flat-topped mesa and the bridge reaching across the deep chasm below to a little fishing town.

Perched high above the waters, with nets hanging from walls and draped over red-tiled roofs, this is a place where dancing might enjoyed, where cats roam rooftops or await visitors at the local café and where walls have been used as canvases for painting little vignettes here and there. Down below in the bay proper,  2D waves rise and fall and fish and whales frolic even as a fishing boat sails by, whilst star fish climb the net cast up the side of the remaining headland, perhaps to dance under the beaming Moon floating just overhead.

The magic of this setting is that it it appears to have been drawn, literally and figuratively, from a childhood memory or a remembrance of childhood drawings. It doesn’t matter that fish appear to be floating above the waves alongside octopi, whilst crabs scuttle from side to side with claws raised in a cheer or the landscape appears the creation of pencil and paper rather than Mother Nature. What matters is the way the setting lifts the heart and encourages a smile, drawing visitors into it with a childlike joy, particularly when the more unusual sit points are discovered!

What’s more, all of this is caught under the most fantastic night sky, filled with stars, fish, the smiling faces of cats, starfish and more. It’s a sky guaranteed to capture the eye and heart as much as the rest.

As is usual for Cica, Summer Night draws its name from a quote. In this case, a Haiku by Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest, Kobayashi Issa (June 15, 1763 – January 5, 1828). Known simply as “Issa”,  a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea, he is referenced as one of the Great Four haiku masters in Japan (along with Bashō, Buson and Shiki). The Haiku Cica has chosen is one of Issa’s most well-known and – for many – most perplexing (how can stars whisper, and to whom are they whispering?).

Summer night—
even the stars
are whispering¹

Kobayashi Issa

However, there is no need to plumb the depths of Issa’s possible meaning here; it is enough to visit Cica’s Summer Night and enjoy it for all it is beneath its blanket of whispering, playful “stars”.

SLurl Details

• Summer Night (DARK, rated Moderate)

1. Yes, this doesn’t appear to follow the “5-7-5 rule” for a total of 17 phonetic units. However, that’s because it is a translation; the original Japanese version does follow the 17 phonetic “rule”. More particularly, it includes both a kireji (cutting word) and a kigo (seasonal reference), clearly marking it as a haiku, rather than something like a senryū. 

For her May 2023 installation, Cica Ghost has used the writings of Frances Hodgson Burnett for a source of inspiration – or perhaps that should be reference; specifically in this case, the third of her most famous works of children’s fiction The Secret Garden, published in 1911. Not that build lifts ideas directly from the novel; rather – and as is the case with Cica’s designs – she uses a quote from the opening of Chapter 25 in the novel to frame her design: And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.

However, whilst the novel goes on the wax lyrical robins and eggs and  the miracle of flight and (to children’s thinking) a house with 100 rooms “no-one ever goes into”, Cica offers us something equally engaging and magical: a place where butterflies flit, crows keep watch, flowers bloom (to themselves blossom into butterflies)  –  hippos frolic.

Yes, hippos; a creature with a long history within Second Life, where they have been an unofficial mascot for a good portion of the platform’s 20-year history. Sadly, this association is perhaps something unknown to more recent residents, with even the SL National Hippo Day of February 15th no longer being widely observed; nor are they to be seen “skipping through SL stomping bugs”. However, evidence of this long association can still be found within the viewer as an echo of even the Lab entering into the spirit of things (CTRL-ALT-SHIT-H for those not in the know).

Given this, and the fact that 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Second Life officially opening its doors to the public  – and, indeed, of the forum conversation that kicked-off the the unofficial adoption of hippos as a mascot, that they should be a part of Cica’s Secret Garden is highly appropriate.

The hippos can be found right across the garden, both outdoors and within some of the garden houses to be found across the garden’s undulating landscape. Caught under something of a heavy sky, the garden has a slight feel of being a little untended, the shadows and low light adding to its mystery (perhaps another indirect reference to the novel?). This makes exploration more interesting – particularly if you are able to run the viewer with Shadows enabled (not a requirement, but certainly a nice-to-have), allowing things to slowly emerge from the darkness.

As is usual with Cica’s builds, there are multiple opportunities for sitting and watching visitors come and go, and for dancing and having a little fun. So, this being said: Happy Hippos – go enjoy!

SLurl Details

• Happy Town (Mysterious, rated Moderate)

For those who have visited and enjoyed Cica Ghost’s region-wide art installations in Second Life over the last decade plus, her build for April 2023 may well raise a sense of nostalgia and memory, whilst retaining its own originality.

Happy Town, which opened on April 7th, 2023, presents a whimsical townscape with a rather unusual feature: everything in it appears to be made of, or covered by, sewn and stitched fabrics, or has been knitted. The land sits as a patchwork quilt, buildings appear to have wall coverings which have been sewn onto them, indoors and out. Even the trees are strangely two-dimensional, their tops looking like snare drums over which green baize has been stretched and onto which flowers have been sewn, before being sat on their sides atop hemmed and sewn trunks. Even the sky appears to be a grey blanket into which the clouds have been stitched like so many patches to cover holes or tears.

It is an engaging and imaginative setting, a place where only the citizens appear to be organic – and even these are not human. Instead, this is a town apparently populated by anthropomorphic cats who tend happy-go-lucky sheep, chickens and pigs whilst also working as the local mechanics. And even then, I’m not sure the sheep or chickens are actually being “kept” so much as also being local inhabitants.

True, they might for the most part be clustered in what might be taken for a central meadow, along with their barns and hen-houses whilst hemmed in (so to speak!) by a low fence with a single opening; but equally might this not also be the local park where the locals have simply come for some weekend fun? Certainly, the hi-fiving chickens seem to be having fun and the sheep – whilst possibly not related to Shawn the Sheep, look as capable as him.

The buildings are a curious mix – some on the ground, others up on stilts, some as wide as they are tall, some with pipes entering or exiting them. It is here that for those of us with long memories might feel that hint of nostalgia, as there is something about Happy Town this brings forth memories of Cica’s 2014 Small Town. This is further aided by the presence of the little cars and the road winding through the town. While both are different in nature to those of Small Town, sitting in one of the cars and setting out along the road brings back memories of driving around Small Town.

As well as the car to drive (you can be sure they are roadworthy thanks to the cats looking after them!), Happy Town includes places where you can dance, places to sit, ladders to climb, and a little theatre where another memory from Cica’s past builds: one of her animated stick figures as seen in the likes of Ghostville offered as a movie to be enjoyed.

Delightful and light, Happy Town will be open through April for people to enjoy.

SLurl Details

• Happy Town (Mysterious, rated Moderate)