Diomita Maurer’s Blog

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/