Art in Second Life 2022 (11) La Maison d’Aneli February 2022

27 Jan 2022 Leave a comment

by diomitamaurer in Art in Second Life Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I visited the latest exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli that officially opened yesterday, January 26th. It features the art of Claude Belgar, Eylinea, Olivia (angsanaburton), Xia Chieng, ilyra Chardin and Jennifer Steele (Steele Wilder). For this blog entry I visited the exhibition several times before it opened officially – hence if there were some late changes, they might not be covered.

I began my visit with ilyra Chardin.
“ilyra chardin is an artist and designer, whose work has been featured in installations and exhibits across the grid. Her artwork crosses media and styles, spanning from real life and digital to SL art. First and foremost, Ilyra is a storyteller. Whether in full SIM, 3D installation, sculpture, or 2D (original mixed media, hand-painted, hand-drawn, and photo) art, she includes multiple layers with depth of meaning. Her work has been the subject of numerous blogs, machinimas, and has been featured on Designing Worlds.” (taken from the accompanying notecard)

Her installation at La Maison d’Aneli is called “The Middle of the Road & Other Myths and Legends”. You arrive in an attic room that features quite some of ilyra’s pictures. The show a broad range of subjects, from scenes in a forest, over chess to birds and portraits. And all appear to be haintpainted, though I don’t know if they are. ilyra’s style is what they have in common.
In the middle of the room is kind of a walkway with a hole, that might be caused by a fire. You fall trough in and land a level below on the court of a destroyed town, quite an apocalyptic scenery,

ilyra Chardin is in Second Life since 2010. She defines herself as RL and SL Artist: “I art therefore I am”. A selection of her artwork may now be viewed in a permanent exhibit at Emergent. Current Exhibitions & Art Installations change frequently and are best seen by looking at ilyra’s profile main page and in picks.

Eylinea is with 3 years still comparably new to Second life. I saw her art before at La Maison d’Aneli and at VeGeTaL PLaNeT Gallery. She’s exploring the possibilities and trying out new things. Her room in the current exhibtion at La Maison d’Aneli is quite high and dominated by rotating and moving black spheres. Like mirror balls, they shimmer in all colours of the rainbow and it is quite intriguing to watch them and the light effects. There are some windows in the room. And through the windows you see cubes in black and white, rotating and moving along.

Eylinea writes about herself in the accompanying notecard: “Photographer, cube juggler, light dresser, tattoo artist apprentice, designer, designer of cardboard furniture and lights, jewellery maker…. dreamer at her own time! To sum up: creator of lots of things, curious about everything. That’s how I could qualify my sl… and my rl!”
If you want to see more of her look up her flickr page.

Olivia (angsanaburton) is a 26 years old French student and interested in painting since her childhood. She works with acrylics, oil and pigments and creates mostly colourful abstract paintings. Olivia joined SL 2 years ago.

At La Maison d’Aneli she shows a spectrum of her art of the last 4 years. The paintings are arranged in a more industrial environment on 2 levels. You can see more of Olivia on her flickr page.

Art by Xia Chieng – “True beauty lies in the cracks of imperfection”
The collection of pictures presented at La Maison d’Aneli is called “Assburguer’s Mood Diary”. “It is original surreal artwork based in the aspie’s universe of Lis Xia Chieng.”
Xia wrote in the accompanying notecard: “For someone with Asperger’s syndrome, understanding their own emotions, feelings, and sensations is an uphill battle. That is why I present Assburguer’s mood diary (assburguer is a common misspelling of aspergers when we wanting to name our syndrome). A collection of surreal portraits based on my moods, and with which I made my first debut in digital painting. At the same time I present the continuation of my paintings from the Visions of an Aspie series, which I presented in this gallery a few months ago, made with traditional painting and technique, which I hope you like and disturb more than ever.”

For Xia her art is “a tool for self-transformation and healing, a way to dialogue with my own internal demons”
Xia is in Second Life since 2010. She has an own gallery, Xia’s Alcis Gallery and a flickr page.

I came across Claude Belgar once so far when I visited MindScape3D in 2020 (read here) where he contributed the the 3D world of art that was featured there. Claude is in Second Life since 2008. I couldn’t find out much about his artistic Second Life. Aneli got this text from Claude: “Passionate and “jack-of-all-trades”, my photographic approach is quite intuitive and not really structured. I just shoot what I like. A lot in nature first (landscapes, animal, macro, astrophotography) then, with time, I begin to get closer to the city and people.”
At his skybox at La Maison d’Aneli we see basically 2 different kind of photographs – RL monochrome pictures of a town by a river, of mountains and of coasts and processed pictures of a forest (I have no idea if the forest pictures are taken in SL or RL). One single photograph is coloured. What the pictures have in common is that your recognize the forest of the river, moutains or the coast only if you get closer and look for more details.

Jennifer Steele (Steele Wilder) made her art installation “exclusively for this showing at La Maison d’Aneli. It’s intention is to take you on a journey through the mind and process of an artist. It is my journey and my process. Other artists may have a very different experience from mine. This puzzle of platforms joined by ladders marks steps in my journey – you’ve entered my personal experience. For me to create this, I had to answer this fundamental question – What is the Journey of an artist?
Success? Failure? Rejection? Acceptance? Evolution? Disaster? Love? Hate? Passion? Desire? – How do I make a visitor experience all of this?

You can’t cheat and cam around at this exhibit. It appears as though nothing is there. Much like when you first learn about an artist and are unfamiliar with their work. It’s a journey just to get to know them. Why don’t I have a way to see it all at once or teleport to the different levels? Because there’s not shortcuts in art – and I want you to experience a journey, not 5 seconds of deciding if you like or hate the work. 🙂” (taken from the accompanying notecard)

Please respect that taking pictures of Jennifer Steele (Steele Wilder)’s contribution to the February exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli is not allowed. Jennifer did approve the impression I show above.
Jennifer Steele (Steele Wilder) is in Second Life for 15 years. She has had a lot of exhibits, runs an own gallery “The Jennifer Steel Gallery” and she is a partner in a lot of businesses in SL. For more information, just check out her profile.

La Maison d’Aneli is owned by Aneli Abeyante. Through her gallery she brings together all forms of creativity in RL and SL and the featured artists come from around the globe. Aneli’s intention is to “put her gallery in the service of artists, so that the world can be better, exchanges and meetings probably contribute even though it seems to be particles.”
Thank you for another great joined exhibtion, Aneli. As always I enjoyed my visit and writing about it. It inspired me.

Landmark to La Maison d’Aneli
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/23/59/22
ilyra chardin’s permanent exhibit at Emergent
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mystique%20Isle/186/80/22
Jennifer Steele (Steele Wilder)’s “The Jennifer Steel Gallery”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Girotte/47/157/39
Xia Chieng’s Alcis Gallery
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Alcis/215/124/3017
Xia Chieng’s flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/183864686@N07/
Olivia (angsanaburton)’s flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/190364023@N06/
Eylinea’s flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189037651@N07/

Art in Second Life 2020 (68) “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin

26 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by diomitamaurer in Art in Second Life Tags: , , , ,

On October 8th Ilyra Chardin’s installation “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” was opened at “The Hannington Arts Foundation at Xeltentat Enterprises” (HAF).

“Ilyra chardin is an artist and designer, whose work has been featured in numerous installations and exhibits across the grid. Her art work crosses media and styles, spanning from real life and digital to SL art. First and foremost, Ilyra is a story teller. Whether in full SIM, 3D installation, sculpture, or 2D (original mixed media, hand-painted, hand-drawn, and photo) art, she includes multiple layers with depth of meaning. Her work has been the subject of numerous blogs, machinimas, and has been featured on Designing Worlds.” (taken from the accompaying notecard)

I saw Ilyra’s work at La Maison d’Aneli in May/June 2020 where she had an installtion called “The New Normal – The Date”. It showed a little Mediterrean town under the current restrictions (read here)

First Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin

There’s a big board at the entrance of Hive 3 at HAF where Ilyra gives some background about the installion:
“Enter the Hall of Giants, also known as Giant’s square. Behind each door, explore the shadows of my imagination expressed in artistic vignettes.
The area behind each door is a self contained, mini art installation. In order to maintain the illusion presented in each of the display, the doors do no open, but rather they are phanton and beckon you walk through and immerse yourself in the story.”

I entered the Giant’s square, a market hall in a medieval style. I really was a dwarf there, but luckily none of the giants was there who could have overseen me and stepped on me. The saw the above mentioned doors on the ground level as well as on the attic And started exploring the seperate installations.

To the left and to the right on the ground are two rooms. One is occupied by a medival giant magician or alchemist, the other by a giant tailor. If these two are ghosts in Ilyra’s closet, what does that tell us? Does she have a particular connection to these professions? Are her parents an alchemist and a tailor? Or did she have bad experiences as a child with them? I guess you can spin a lot of stories about it.

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (1)

In the back of the giant’s court are four more rooms. One shows a rubbish dump surrounded by chimneys and plants of heavy industry, another looks like an old mine or underground industry. Both do not look really healthy. In the third room is a grave, more a mausoleum surronded by a peaceful landscape. There’s a passage to the fourth room where you see the entrance to a mine and a ferryman who brings his passengers to the other whore where the graveyard is located.
Again I can only speculate but for me it looks as if the unhealthy environment kills people and workers. Are these the ghosts in Ilyra’s closet? Who knows?

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (2)

On the attic are a few more rooms and more to speculate about. THe first room I visited was quite colourful. You immerse into the digital world, between motherboards and chips, between bits and bytes and printed circuits. This isntallation as actually two rooms, one for the hackers and another for the gamers. At least from a pure artistic view, this installation a highlight.

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (3)

But all rooms are connected in some way. We just don’t know how. The are pieces of memories, pieces of thoughts, pictures and scences that appear in dreams and nightmares. The last room I visited looked to me like the headquarter of a secret agency on the first glance. Furnished with just the basics for a headquarter: beds, desks, chairs, computers, one toilet and gasmasks. If you cross the room you can walk through another door and come to a desert, very hot with charred trees and one road leading to nowhere and an old van. The scene is quite scary (at least for me)

Impressions of “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” by Ilyra Chardin (4)

Ilyra is a story teller as stated in the accompanying notecard. I outlined my thoughts, the relation to youth and former days, heavy industry and an unhealthy environment on the ground level. The attic is more related to future, to a world dominated by gamers and hackers in a more and more virtual environment while the real environment is almost uninhabitable and humans live in bunkers … or is the headquarter of a secret agency what was my first thought?

Anyway, you have to make up your own story visiting Ilyra Chardin’s installation “The Ghosts in My Closets – Cobwebs & Other Thoughts in the Attic” at Hannington Arts Foundation. It shall be open until the end of this year.

Hannington Arts Foundation (HAF), the former HEA Gallery is owned by Hannington Xeltentat and was built by Tansee, who also curates the foundation. Thank you Hannington for providing the space and thank you Tansee for enabling Ilyra Chardin’s installation. I enjoyed my visit again.

Landmark to HAF “The Hannington Arts Foundation at Xeltentat Enterprises”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Xeltentat%20Enterprises/132/124/3525

Art in Second Life 2020 (28) La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020

21 May 2020 Leave a comment

by diomitamaurer in Art in Second Life Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, May 20th, Aneli Abeyante opened a new joined exhibtion of 7 artists: Sophie Maire Sinclair (Perpetua1010), Slatan Dryke, Desy Magic, ilyra Chardin, Sweet Susanowa, Djehuti-Anpu (Thoth Jantzen) and Nok Kirax.
With this new exhibition Aneli also changed (once again) the concept of her gallery “La Maison d’Aneli“. The main hall is now on the ground level in a large industrial or storage hall. From here doors with teleporting functionality lead to skyboxes, one box (50x50x30 meter) for each artist with an allowance of 300 prims. This way the artists are quite free how they showcast their work and there’s no destraction from others rooms or art. I admit, that I like this concept a lot.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020 – the new gallery concept, you start your visit in a large industrial and enter skyboxes by teleporter doors

I visited the new joined exhibtion several times before the opening event which I couldn’t attend due to my other activities in Second Life. My visit started with ilyra Chardin’s box where she installed a little Mediterrean town under the current restrictions. She titeled her installation with “The New Normal – The Date”.
The setting is quite lovely, I could almost smell the sea and the Mediterrean air and flair. But no tourists on the streets and no inhabitants. You have to look up to the windows and balconies and even there are not many. I saw one man playing a banjo and singing and I also saw “The Date”, two people sitting at dinner on two adjacent balconies.
“ilyra Chardin is an artist and designer, whose work has been featured in numerous installations and exhibits across the grid. Her art work crosses media and styles, spanning from real life and digital to SL art.  First and foremost, Ilyra is a story teller.” (taken from the accompanying notecard)

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: ilyra Chardin – “The New Normal – The Date”

Nok Kirax is in Second Life since 2007 and has dome a lot of different things in SL for example building and landscaping. His current passion is photography. He mainls makes portraits with a non coloured background (black or white) which forces the viewer to focus on the face. The portraits are quite expressive and the eyes and every wrinkles tell a story. You begin to think about the person behind the face, what is the story, which fear do they have, which passion?

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Nok Kirax

Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010)’s box at La Maison d’Aneli is a mixture between a showcase for her pictures, her art and a mystic, hazy fantasy place. Set to “midnight” the pictures illuminate the scene and it needs a second view to realize that the pictures depict human bodies, mostly female bodies and all colours of different yellow tones. The pictures develop a totally different impression in this environment than just seen on a black or white screen.
“Sophie Marie Sinclair is a RL painter, cartoonist, book author and ghostwriter for well known comedians.. She mainly paints nude from models and abstract art. She loves to experiment with different kind of paint and lithography. She has made several book illustrations and was for many years political cartoonist for a well known satire magazine. She lived and worked in the Unites States, Australia, Rome and Monaco.” (taken mostly from the accompanying notecard)
Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010) has her own gallery the “SUBCUTAN Art Gallery and Multimedia Centre“, which I visited recently. The blogpost about that visit is up to be published in a few days.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010)

“doyouSL builder/artist Thoth Jantzen (aka “TJ”, “Djehuti-Anpu”) specializes in creating massively immersive multi-media environments and sculpture.  Using video as “paint”, he creates builds with structures that allow the media to “paint” itself on them in interesting, often beautiful ways, with changing patterns emerging as a result as the video plays out over time. His work’s been displayed at numerous SL events and galleries, and some in RL as well.” (taken from the accompanying notecard)
The see Thoth’s installation at La Maison d’Aneli you should make sure to set your viewer to the proposed settings. You sit down in one of the colourful pods and you screen is filled with permanent changing forms and colours. You hear psychadelic music and (at least I) felt like being on a drug trip. Most probably because I never was on any drug trip, that is how I think it would be. Your mind begins to wander as you follow how the forms and colours develop on your screen and you get calm and relexed drifting into another world. A very well made show, that did impress me. Unfortunately a picture can just grab a still from a moment and you can’t see the motion, on the other hand every moment captured is kind of art itself.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Thoth Jantzen

I saw Sweet Susanowa’s art the first time at another exhibition at La Maison d’Aneli back in July 2019. Sweet joined Second Life 12 years ago without thinking about any exhibition at a gallery. She is a photographer now in real life as well as in Second Life. At La Maison d’Aneli different examples of her work are displayed ranging from processed and artificially manipulated black and white portrait pictures, erotic art to coloured abstract art. Some of her picture look like snapshots, even double exposured and hazy and this impressions is enhanced by round corners. They capture the person supposedly unnoticed, a glimpse of everyday life and some are very erotic in my personal view.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Sweet Susanowa

Desy Magic is in Second Life for almost 12 years. She is a passionate photographer and she has a unique and colourful style in which she processes her pictures and makes them real eye catchers. You can still see the original motif yet the abstract forms or objects added to her picture are a dominant element, intriguing.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Desy Magic

Slatan Dryke is in Second Life since 2007. “In RL Slatan loves Art in every expression, but he is most fond of paintings and sculptures, following his classical education. Slatan is also a photographer in RL. In Second Life he’s a a perfectionist in taking his pictures, never missing a single detail. Slatan rarely uses an editor to modify his pictures, so he likes to say his works are “natural”. He also creates sculptures, which are often slight but become alive with a creative use of textures, lights and movements.” (excerpt taken from the accompanying notecard)
At La Maison d’Aneli he showcases a colourful installation in his box. The walls, the floor and the ceiling are textured in red, brown and blue tones. In the center you see round animated spirals made of faces, worms, mice and skeletons and on top of the spirals are two large bottled paperships. Furtheron there are some abstract tree-like textured objects in the room, The combination of the art objects is hard to Interpret, at least for me, yet the single objects are intriguing.

La Maison d’Aneli May/June 2020: Slatan Dryke

The current exhibition stays opened at least until June 20th.
La Maison d’Aneli is owned by Aneli Abeyante. Through her gallery she brings together all forms of creativity in RL and SL and the featured artists come from around the globe. Aneli’s intention is to “put her gallery in the service of artists, so that the world can be better, exchanges and meetings probably contribute even though it seems to be particles.”
Thank you for another great joined exhibtion, Aneli. As always I enjoyed my visit and writing about it. It always inspires me.

Landmark to La Maison d’Aneli (new, it’s on the ground level!)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/23/65/23
Landmark to Sophie Marie Sinclair (Perpetua1010)’s “SUBCUTAN Art Gallery and Multimedia Centre”
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ocean%20Island/136/128/1002

Simploring 2017 (63) Temprus – My Secret Garden

10 Aug 2017 Leave a comment

by diomitamaurer in Exploring sims in Second Life Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, August 1st, I made another simploring tour. I found Temprus – My Secret Garden in the SL Destination guide  under the category art.
“Temprus, home to Art in the Park, is featuring the work of Ilyra Chardin in a full sim, immersive art installation. Begin your exploration with “normal” gardens that quickly lead both to the secret garden and to Art in the Park.”

Upon your landing, you choose to either walk along the shoreline to “Art in the Park” or to see “My Secret Garden. I first explored “Art in the Park”, a gallery within a park just by the shoreline. There are paintings of several artists that have exhibitions also somewhere else like Sandi Benelli, Maxie Daviau, CybeleMoon (Hana Hobinoo), Kayleigh Lavende and ilyra chardin herself, who owns “Temprus – My Secret Garden“. As far as I understood, the paintings are changing, there’re also particular exhibitions, which are announced either in a group, that you can join, or on the homepage for the sim “Temprus Times“.

“Art in the park” at Temprus – My Secret Garden

After my visit to the “Art in the Park”, I follwed the path to “My Secret Garden”. The stairs and the path end at a hut with a board “Just a garden shed. Nothin’ interesting here! KEEP OUT! This means YOU!!!” Of course that reads like an invitation to have a look, and I looked inside.

There’s nothing inside but the end of a tunnel that leads you below the big massive rocks to the other part of the island – and to a house with a garden in which art of ilyra chardin is exhibited. Is this the “My Secret Garden?” Honestly I have no idea. It is nice and tasteful though – or is “My Secret Garden” the farmstead, that covers most of this part of the island beyound the massive rock? I had a look around and enjoyed the silence and the peace. There’re also some children playing (mesh dolls) but ecept ot them, I saw none a the whole farmstead. At one end of the farmstead is a crooked and high frame house and I climbed on it just for the view over the island. From there I could see a beach which was my next point to visit.

Exploring the path to “My Secret Garden”? at Temprus – My Secret Garden

At the beach you find a scene that reminded me of Gulliver’s Travels by the Irish writer Jonathan Swift. Or is that scene related to anything else?

At the Northern end of the island is a row of industrial or warhouse houses, a crane and the submarine Nautilus. Again a scenery that doesn’t fit to the farmstead and seems to be of another world. And there’s this woman selling flowers and veggies … strange. There might be more to discover that will bring some more light into this, but I was lacking time.

Farmstead (upper left), Gulliver (upper right), Nautilus (lower left) and Nautilus Harbour (lower right) at Temprus – My Secret Garden

The last edge of “Temprus – My Secret Garden“, that I explored was Maycomb. It is spearated from the farmstead and the other parts of the island by a steep rock wall on one side and by the massive rock that parts the island by the other side. What you see is just one road, on the first glance I assumed that this road and the houses along it are a reproduction of the real Maycomb, Alabama in the United States. It looks at least typical, the map, that is shown on a baord at the entrance of the street looks real – but Maycomb, Alabama is a fiction from the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee published in 1960. The primary themes of “To Kill a Mockingbird involve” racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. The story takes place during three years (1933–35) of the Great Depression in the fictional “tired old town” of Maycomb, Alabama, the seat of Maycomb County (source Wikipedia)

My visit to “Temprus – My Secret Garden” was very varied, I enjoyed art as well as nature and some fictional places of novels, literature in 3D 🙂
Thank you, ilyra chardin!

Landmark to Temprus – My Secret Garden
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/FrieNDS%20R%20Us/27/26/23
Homepage – Temprus Times
http://temprustimes.blogspot.de/
ilyra chardin at deviant Art
https://ilyrachardin.deviantart.com/