The following is taken from the Holly Kai Park blog:
The first in the new series of Art at the Park exhibitions opens at Holly Kai Park at 12:00 SLT on Thursday, December 17th, 2015, and will run through until Sunday, February 7th, 2016.
The exhibition features the work of six Second Life artists and photographers who between them offer a rich and diverse approach to virtual art: Boudicca Amat, Kess Crystal, Jaydn Firehawk, Johannes1977 Resident, Nico Time and CioTToLiNa Xue.
To mark this inaugural event of the new programme, there will be a special gala reception on Sunday, December 20th, 2015, featuring the music of Erin68 Frog. This will commence at 12:00 noon at The Pavilion, and formal attire is requested. Further details will be pushed in this blog in due course.
About the Artists
Boudicca Amat
“I make pictures. I hope you will like them,” is how Boudicca Amat disarmingly describes her work.
It’s a description which hides a remarkable talent for the visual and creative process which results in truly remarkable pieces of art – as anyone who has seen her Flickr stream will be only too aware.
Mixing original images with those inspired by classical artists or artistic styles, Boudicca’s work is painstaking in its composition, encompassing everything from developing poses through backdrop design, costume and accessory sourcing, building, camera placement, the shooting process, post processing, through to finished item. It’s a process which takes days but which yields incredible images, and it all originates from an initial idea which might take weeks to germinate before she’s ready to begin the process of turning the idea into a finished piece.
Art at the Park marks the first public exhibition of Boudicca’s work, and we’re pleased and honoured she accepted the invitation be a part of this exhibit, and hope that this exhibition will be the first of many for her.
Kess Crystal
The multi-talented Kess Crystal has been involved in Second Life since 2009. She is the owner of !Exodus! Rock Club, which will be celebrating it’s sixth anniversary in 2016, and she is also the Marketing and PR Manager for MadPea Games.
Kess has been an active SL photographer for some two years now, and is entirely self-taught. She focuses primarily on avatar photography, noting that “Second Life avatars are beautiful and the options are numerous; but behind each one is a person with thoughts and feelings and I try to capture some of what is going on for me personally behind the screen in each of my pictures.” The results are stunning, as can be seen from her Flickr stream and her blog.
Holly Kai Park also marks the first time Kess has been a part of a public exhibition of Second Life photography and art – we hope that it won’t be the last.
Jaydn Firehawk
A professional geographer and an amateur photographer, Jaydn was born in the Philippines and raised in the United States, where she has lived and worked in numerous locations: Quezon City in the Chicago area, up-state New York, central Connecticut, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Berkeley, Washington DC and New Jersey. She now resides in central Texas.
Jaydn’s photography, which can be seen at her in-world gallery, is informed by her training as a geographer and by the fact she suffers from bipolar disorder, which she notes has bestowed a mantle of intensity in the way she sees the world.
Jaydn’s disability has also given rise to her founding the Pixel To Pixel Foundation, which matches donors and sponsors with people in Second Life with genuine disabilities, providing the latter with a small weekly stipend of Linden Dollars to help them with their SL time. You can find out more about Pixel To Pixel through this article.
Johannes1977 Resident
Johannes1977 Resident, better known to his friends as John, is a veritable powerhouse in Second Life. His art has been displayed widely in-world, he is the founder of Windlight Magazine, operating both the Windlight Art Gallery and sponsoring the UWA Art Gallery. He is also a member of the Linden Endowment for the Arts Advisory Board.
In 2015, John co-founded Team Diabetes in Second Life in 2015, officially representing and supporting the American Diabetes Association. And if all this weren’t enough, he is also a DJ and club owner!
In the physical world, John serves as an officer in the United States Marines, and has been deployed to Iraq twice and once to Afghanistan. While on deployment, he would take photograph as a means of documenting his view of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which have been featured in exhibitions in-world.
For Art at the Park, John presents The German Collection, a set of images of his mother’s beloved Germany, which he dedicates to her memory.
Nico Time
Nico describes himself as a Second Life explorer and an audiophile who enjoys the amazing scenery and mesh fashions found across the platform, as well as the music scene and getting to meet people from all over the world.
His love of Second lie is evident throughout his photography (and his videos), which can be found on his Flickr stream. Nico’s work has also been celebrated in-world at a number of exhibitions and galleries.
“I’m always taking pictures here and there along the way,” Nico says of his work, “Because some of the things I see you just wouldn’t believe!”
CioTToLiNa Xue
CioTToLiNa has been involved in Second Life for almost seven years. A 24-year-old university student of veterinary medicine in Italy, she is disarmingly modest about her SL times and her growing interest in artistic expression.
With no prior graphics or 3D modelling experience, she has been learning both over the course of the last six months, and the sculptures and paintings presented at Holly Kai Park are a testament to how much she has already achieved, although she modestly feels she has much to learn, her time mostly taken up with her veterinary studies.
CioTToLiNa’s sculptures can sometimes be found among the art at the Art on Roofs exhibition area, and in August / September 2015, she displayed some of her work at Inara Pey’s Impressions exhibition at LEA-6. Art at the Park marks her further major exhibition with other Second Life artists, and her sculptures can be found throughout the park, both among the 2D artist display decks,along the boat moorings and near to the parkland paths and trails.
We’re sure these talented artists will offer something for everyone visiting Holly Kai Park during December and January, and we look forward to seeing you there as well.
SLurl Details
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 