Steelhead Art City: 2D Pieces

In addition to sculptures, we also had 2D pieces on display in the train station, a brownstone, and a warehouse. Here are my abstract textile pieces and portrait sketches...

Lunar's drawings...

Otenth's photos...

Myrtil Igaly's paintings...

Willow Leafstorm's photos...

...and Steelhead Resident kitteh's kitty art...

I want to thank all of the artists who participated and helped to create something special in the Town of Steelhead!!!!

Steelhead Bohemians!

As part of Steelhead Art City, we threw an Artists Meet & Greet, where we got together and ended up talking about art techniques, works in progress and creative things. Willow popped through for a moment and after she left (from l. to r.) Jimmy Branagh, Phin, Stew Macpherson, Gloriana Maertens and I came up with the idea to create a group--the Steelhead Bohemians!

The Steelhead Bohemians are a group of creatives who will meet biweekly at 7 on Mondays in the Steelhead Library to informally talk about art, poetry, writing, and whatever pops into our heads. Hopefully in the future we will hold exhibits and presentations in Steelhead. The group is open for anyone to join and feel free to stop through!

Raglan Shire ArtWalk!

The Raglan Shire ArtWalk is underway for the whole month of May. Covering multiple sims, you will find fantastic artwork--both 2D and 3D--throughout! karmagirl avro (SQUABBIT!) did a great job as the main coordinator and there are lots of events going on for the whole month. You can take a ride on the Hedgiepillar, which you can hop on and take an almost half-hour ride throughout the ArtWalk...

You can find some of my pieces there too! Here I am cruising by my work on a Hedgiepillar with Dizzy...

1001 Nights Event

As part of Steelhead's activities, there was a 1001 Nights reading over two days. Lunar convinced me to read for the first night and I selected Sir Richard Burton's "Tale of the Lover Who Feigned Himself A Thief". I had a really nice time and those cushions sure were comfortable...
And um...Lunar has a mom. I didn't think he was spawned or from a stork or anything, but seems she has arrived to town out of the blue. One thing's for certain is that the resemblance is pretty strong...

At the Artwalk

While roaming the ArtWalk, I came across these great sepia-toned photos by Lorimae Undercroft. Look! The Steelhead Shanghai pavilion!

Bunnying Down

Extrovirtual, which famously specializes in all things tiny, recently built a new shopping area open to other tiny creators in their sim (which is part of the Raglan sims). Here I am setting up my little E.Laval Tinies cart as Noramyr--one of Extrovirtual's founders and creators--helps...
Shady Fox (on the left) told me that Noramyr was super-tired after all of the building she had been doing to create it...And I got Lunar to bunneh down and come with me to the ArtWalk! OK, I love that artist's belt he has on...

Raglan Shire ArtWalk 2010

Over 100 artists have descended upon the sim of Raglan Shire to participate in its ArtWalk 2010! If you visit Raglan Shire until the end of May, you will find yourself surrounded by artwork of all types. You can find 2D works in Raglan and sculptures in its neighboring sim of Heron Shire. Also look out for the fantastic topiaries sprinkled throughout it...
Here I am (on the left) with organizer (and Lady Tigress) Teal Freenote, creator 1wuz Gray and Raglan's bunneh-in-chief Zayn Till...
There will also be live music events throughout the month as well. I was so excited about participating that I made sure I was there early to claim a hedge to hang my pencil sketches up on. You can visit them HERE and I hope you'll enjoy my pieces, as well as the other artists on display!

Transformation & Transcending

Bettina Tizzy decided to cease posting on her NPIRL blog yesterday. It was always one of my faves because being an explorer like I am, I enjoyed visiting a lot of the places she discussed. It was also a great showcase of the imaginations of SL's content creators. She also gave me the opportunity to participate in the Rezzable Garden of NPIRL Delights last year. I know I was thrilled to be among some of the most creative folks on the Grid. She has said that she will continue to tweet what she finds and the inworld groups themselves are not disbanding. She has been busy in RL and I also get the feeling that she is working on something else great.

I can absolutely understand the feeling of wishing to move on to something else in a way. Blogging and keeping up with the social media of SL in addition to your RL can be demanding. I know that my friend and virtual sis-in-law Zoe Connolly recently did the same, deTwittering and dePlurking and unblogging. I do believe there is a point that one has to make a choice as to how much they wish to manage their time on SL-related activities, even if it means leaving SL altogether like Eshi did recently.

SL--and virtual worlds in general--are meant to be a complement to one's RL. We change. Our needs and wants, both inworld and out, do too. We transform and sometimes transcend them. And there is nothing wrong with that. I wish much luck for all three of them in their future endeavors, and I'm sure it's not the last any of us will hear from them.

Visiting Syncretia

I am not usually one to pay attention to the main page of my viewer (I have Emerald), but an image on it caught my eye and I followed it to the Syncretia sim...
Owned by NPIRL blogger and SL art maven Alpha Auer, Syncretia is an island of art installations...Such as this one...I recognized Truthseeker Young's "The Singularapture is Near" installation that was originally in the Rezzable Garden of NPIRL Delights...
Hey, where's my treat?!

Into the Woods

Since I was squirrelly, I thought that I would explore the beautiful sim that makes up Chakryn Forest...I roamed through the lush woods and came upon one of the sim's founders, arts maven Bettina Tizzy of NPIRL (Impossible in RL) group preparing for a new show. She was wearing a fantastic mechadoll wireframe-inspired AV by Cutea Benelli of Grim Bros. It was very nice to see her again and we chatted for a bit before I went off to get lost in the vegetation again. I was only knee-high after all...

Sea Islands Paintings Exhibit

I attended a really lovely exhibit of paintings by Indea Vaher at the Bluffs Nature Preserve Center for the Arts. She was inspired by Gullah culture and the Sea Islands along coastal South Carolina and Georgia--an area I'm familiar with and love...
I quilt in RL, so I came away with the painting behind her entitled "Puppy in the Wash." To visit for yourself, click HERE.

Bryn Oh's Immersiva

Dia had been telling me about artist Bryn Oh's Immersiva sim. I remember her steampunky creations from the Rezzable Garden and her installation at SLRFL last year and finally got a chance to go over and see it with Phin...As we stood in the water, I truly enjoyed the spare, yet detailed pieces...
The detail on some of them was incredible...
I loved the huge "Ferrisquito"...
But this one? With the seedlings that float away one by one on delicate strands? This one was my favorite of them all...

Dresden Gallery in SL

I'll admit that I don't normally pay attention to the LL Showcase in Search, but I was intrigued and thought I'd look and see. In RL I love art museums and have visited the Prado, Louvre, Metropolitan, Vatican Museum, and National Gallery of Art. I can spend hours among the artworks and it makes me really happy. So it made sense that the Dresden Gallery SL would be really interesting to me...I'll admit, I absolutely enjoyed my visit here! It is well laid out and truly has a feel like wandering through a RL one. Why? It is a 1:1 scale re-creation of the Old Masters Gallery of the real one. You can pick up an audiotour if you like and the masterpiece paintings are beautiful, with some available for purchase. When you click on the paintings a notecard comes up for you, but I really really wish that they had put the piece's name and artist in the description so that when you hover over it you know and can choose to take the notecard if you wish. Other than that, I had a very nice time there. I love when there are things like this in SL. I might not make it to Germany to see it in person, but we can see them in here! If you'd like to go visit it for yourself, go HERE.

Farewell to the Princeton Installations

Due to the openspace sim pricing change, Princeton University will be letting go of their four OSs that were home to some of the most interesting art installations on the grid and destinations unto themselves. The very act of their creating such places for us to enjoy showed the university's understanding of SL as a medium of incredible expression. It's quite a loss, but as I have said before in previous posts, our world is an ephemeral one with persons and places we care about being liable to disappear at any moment. But, as I told a fellow visitor to one of the installations, "A venue may disappear, but an artist goes on to create anyway..."

AM Radio's "The Quiet" "DynaFleur" by Douglas Story, Desdemona Enfield, Dizzy Banjo & Poid MahovlichPoid Mahovlich's "Triptych" (this and the following photo)
"Liquid Light" by Juria YoshikawaI realized I don't have a good picture for Scope Cleaver, AldoManutio Abruzzo and Poid Mahovlich's "Ludovico's Lament". It was a beautiful installation as well. Support your SL artists now, while you can, as you never know if putting off a visit to see their work might be too late.

How I Spent the End of Burning Life

Well, the festival's wrapped up. Installations are being taken down. The fun's now over. So when Lunar asked me to join him there, I was like "Why not?" and popped over. I found him chilling on a sofa with his feet up calmly munching on popcorn. I thought the glass walls and decor looked pretty comfortable and sat down with my own cup and happily munched away as well. He mentioned something about the "fish" and I thought he meant the one on the table across from us in its tank...Um...little did I know that he meant THAT one!
installation: "Fish Out of Water" by Khloe Carter

Elle @ Burning Life: The "Steampunk" Builds

Being a brass kitty, I couldn't help but to gravitate towards builds of brass and rusted metals and such that were "steampunk"-y in nature, such as Perefim Cao's "Cemetery of Broken Creations" (Meta)...The lovely "Clockwork Spider" by Stormfire Leandros (Micro)...The towering "Basalt Clock" by Elfod Nemeth (Babel)...
And "Bogon Flux" by Blotto Epsilon and Cutea Benelli. This beautifully textured build was there one minute, and when I returned about 15 minutes later, it was disassembling itself and on fire...only to rebuild itself soon afterwards...I became a bit tired and thought I'd take a break and peoplewatch. Burning Life 's going on until Oct 5. Get on over there already!

Elle @ Burning Life: The Exploring Continues...

Yes, I did manage to get through all 22 sims and here are more highlights from my wanderings. I peered through the telescope at AM Radio's "Beneath the Tree That Died" ...The simplicity of Moongold Munro's "When Worlds Collide"...
All of that money swirling around me in Jenene Lemaire's appropriately named "Mirage"...
I enjoyed Shellina Winkler's "Art Lab"...
Near Dia's build I heard drumming and saw folks dancing in long white robes with lanterns and fire...I couldn't help but to stop and watch for a while...