Freak out, part. 1 of 2

(Disclaimer: I know I've been focusing on art a lot.I can't help myself. But I will expand, I promise.) The next two posts have to do with the quality of art. I have something to say about what I see presented online. First of two entries...

I used to work for an art moving company. We’d pack and crate paintings, photographs and sculptures for collectors, galleries and museums. I remember being in a storeroom, a van Gogh painting resting on its back, thinking how lucky I was to be this close to a work of art, no alarms or guards to shoo me away. My boss said “Go ahead, touch it.” I blinked at him. “Really?” He nodded and giddily I touched the surface of the canvas, tracing my fingers over the hills and valleys of aged paint.

It was electrifying, feeling the brush strokes, and I began to get an idea of how the master worked his magic. There is a phenomena called Stendhal’s Syndrome or hyperkulturemia – the feeling of being totally overwhelmed when regarding a work of art or anything of great beauty; the heart races, you feel faint, dizzy, mad even. People have been known to react violently too. At the museum I work in, a man ran into the galleries, slashed two paintings with a knife, and ran out again. Beauty can inspire pain when it feels unattainable. There are times when I’m working with a great work of art when I feel almost besieged by beauty. I stare endlessly into a canvas and try to put myself in the artist’s mind – looking as he looked – taking in the scene before him as he transports it from eye to brain to arm to fingertip to canvas. I am overcome. I run.

patience is a virtue

waiting patiently...sort of...for internet access to resume

Exhibition Opens!

The glint of eye, the crook of an elbow, the curl of the lips; what is it about these little parts all strung together that reveal a personality? Historically, portraits represented the authority, lineage or religiosity of a person. Within SL, a portrait is an articulation of identity in a realm where identity is more fluid than many of us are used to.

PersoNation presents the genre of portrait making with the works of ten sl artists. Some of the creators are artists in rl, some do not consider themselves artists at all. Some manipulate their images using a variety of tools, or deliberately pose their subjects, while other images were captured quickly. Each portrait expresses the unique intersection of artist and subject. PersoNation asks you, the viewer, to connect with each and discover your own story.

Come hang out on Friday night for dancing, contemplation, conversation and relaxation! The Woodget Gallery: teleport from here.

A Summer Valentine

Some people look at us SLifers and think we may be living in isolation – tethered as we are to our computers. We’re imagined sitting in lonely rooms, isolated, ignoring the actual world around us. Maybe that’s true for some. But for most, we spend enormous amounts of time maintaining robust online friendships that compliment our real lives.

I didn’t start SL to find friends, probably because I’d kept a skeptical eye on cyberspace. I thought I was just playing a little game like Myst. But friends happened...

When I was a kid, I had two pen pals for years (until I became a teenager and turned all my writing inward, making melodramatic entries in my diaries, pretending I was the girlfriend of Baudelaire). I still have all their letters, their photographs, and other ephemera that could be folded into an envelope and mailed under one stamp. I learned from them; each person, a gift.

Making friends in SL reminds me a bit of cultivating a pen pal...here we are finding people from around the world, throwing our energies into getting to know one another. The “getting-to-know” you part is so thrilling. I’ve been blown away by the kindness of virtual strangers willing to reveal parts of themselves, whether through their art, their ear, their heart. I’m thankful for the trust my friends have shown me by sharing themselves, and for their kindness, their goofiness and their individuality. Thank you. :)) <333

Happy Birthday, America!

Hugh Laurie's song for America

Bittersweet memories

The Caerleon Art Collective is hosting a virtual exhibition, Aequitas, to compliment a rl exhibition at OSA Artspace, in Washington Heights, New York. Artists were asked to mine their childhood memories for inspiration. Nebulosus Severine and two other artists created a vignette, or stage set, on which guests can place themselves. Severine built an evocative and typical scene for many children shipped off to summer camp each year, called Summer, 1985; a platform tent in the woods; sleeping bag resting on thin mattress, bag of clothes stuffed damply beneath the rusty springs of the bed, can of repellent rolling across the floor. Visitors are asked to lie on the bed and listen to the radio. Stations quickly change as though someone were spinning the dial looking for a good tune. Snatches of 80s anthems blare - Shout by Tears for Fears, Its Much Too Late for Goodbye by Julian Lennon, Freedom by George Michael (*cringe*). Severine remarks that her camp experiences left her feeling fairly traumatized, being separated for the first time from her family. Each installation acts as a therapeutic setting where those first time moments, of feeling lost, unloved, lonely or scared, can be reenacted. I found myself slipping into the 80s when sitting next to Severine’s bag of camp clothes. I had terrible homesickness at camp. I participated in all of those typical activities; wrapped the boy’s dorms in toilet paper, sang a Squeeze song at the talent show, learned how to sail, did my chores...When my mom picked me up, however, I had bandages wrapped around both knees and hands from a big tumble down a hill, poison ivy all over my limbs, a fever, and conjunctivitis in both eyes. She took one look at me and started laughing. Nevertheless, I was sent back again and again for another tortuous round. Childhood memories are bittersweet...we crave the simplicity of being young, but remember most the times when things were – complicated. Be sure to spend some time also with the installations by Dekka Raymaker - Fear & Hatred in Rookley Close, Untitled by Banrion Constantine and Things Change at Nighttime by Penumbra Carter.

Exhibition up until July 3rd.

RMB City remembers New Orleans

I went to New Orleans for the first time in August 2005. As soon as I hopped on my first street car I felt I had found my feet. It was all that I imagined and better and I settled in as hard as five days would allow. Five days after I left, the city was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. I felt my heart breaking as I watched events unfold on the news. Ironically, I had been at a conference full of archivists – experts in preservation. After the disaster I remember a woman contemplating the ruins of her house. She held up a wet and torn piece of paper. “It’s my grandmother’s gumbo recipe!” It was her most valued possession.

Years later, the city still struggles to recover. In November 2008, Chinese artist Cao Fei (an artist with seemingly boundless energy) and architects Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix (MAP Office) collaborated on a project for Prospect 1, the largest international biennale in America, based in New Orleans. The artists created an environment in SL at RMB City. They illustrated and animated a line drawing depicting an area of the Lower 9th Ward (part of the city hardest hit by the flood). The installation was projected into the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New Orleans, and allowed gallery visitors to wander around the sim using ready-made avatars. A blogger for the Times-Picayune – the local paper – described the installation:

“Translucent waves sloshed over us from time to time. Buildings regularly collapsed... Drifting zombie-like through the sparse, lonely landscape was an endless loop anxiety nightmare -- an accurate depiction of post-flood New Orleans, wouldn't you agree?” (read more here)

I wandered around the colorless setting, admiring the strong black lines of the drawings. It took me a while to find a tiny square prim (on the ground near the trailer) that turned on the animations. Once I clicked on it, the sky immediately darkened above; clouds gathered, rain fell, waves pushed against the illustrations, which suddenly seemed as vulnerable as the gumbo recipe on paper. I sat in a little shed and felt the cold waters creep up around my ankles. A bigger disaster than Katrina would be if we forgot what happened there in August 2005. To read more about recovery activities in New Orleans read here.