All eggs in one basket now: Pietmond. Edwardston Station Gallery importance seems to have shrunk… can’t exist independently. Instead: projected new gallery in sky, kind of building on UFO I had to recently delete, reachable from Underground Pietmond (above-below dichotomy).
Although I probably can’t promote it in Second Life as much as I would want, Pietmond is already a great success. I’m friends with all exhibitors, which I think is important. I enjoyed exhibiting some established SL artists last year, but distance was still great — I was one of many places their art was shown, another stop. The artists’ works I’m showing now are all more distant from the Second Life virtual reality itself. Besides, my SL friend Flora Nordenskiold, who set up my first solo SL exhibit (and only one so far featuring my own work) is really starting to have the bases covered on providing great spaces for established SL artists, often numbering 4 for each new show at her Nordan Art gallery.
The original idea for the Blue Feather Gallery, starting in Noru, went along the lines of what Flora has evolved through Nordan Art (after what she would admit was a rather bumpy beginning; I was involved!). But it didn’t take me long to realize, 1) I didn’t have much of a talent for self promotion needed to be “successful” in the SL art scene, 2) my hours spent in SL are bunched together more in the middle of the night (2am-6am), when most of that virtual world is “asleep” — hard to promote/mingle when no one is around!, 3) I do not consider myself much of a real life artist, in that I’m not dedicated to any one craft in a totally artistic way, in contrast to many SL artists who are successful in real life art as well. (thinking here, for example, of Natsha Lemton, an early exhibitor at the Noru’s Blue Feather Gallery and who subsequently had a showing in Flora’s gallery as well), 4) I’m dedicated now to Linden mainland, and most inworldly successful artists or art galleries work on estate property — not exclusively but I just thought I’d add that in, since it naturally leads to, 5) I see SL as a giant piece of art itself, with mainland a great example of heterogeneous collage that represents a primary media interest. Because of this, I like to explore — I like to immerse myself in the artwork constantly surrounding me in this virtual world. I think for this reason, although I like to visit art galleries I mainly find them to be lacking in and of themselves. I always find myself poking around the vegetation surrounding the galleries. What makes this artist tick, and why are they involving themselves in SL?
So back to the Blue Feather Gallery, what it evolved into (some might say “devolved” here, hehe) was a type of personal shrine to this exoteric art known as mainland, specifically for the continent I call home: Jeogeot. “Jeogeot Through Art and Word,” condensed version, has become the permanent, final exhibit for this particular space. It will probably remain a cornerstone, again just on a personal scale, for any art or art promotion that I will be engaged in. It helps move me away from myself. And appropriately I’ve now been able to incorporate it into Pietmond, which is, on a larger scale, doing the same. And Pietmond itself becomes a small piece of Jeogeot, a fragment of a greater whole.
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Continuing…
Very pleased with the development of the SoSo Gallery and all Pietmond Art Crawl Galleries. SoSo has grown from just showing the 20 collages of my Oblong series to also exhibiting works of others, starting with Mike Casey, an old synching buddy, shall we say, who I’ve corresponded with off and on for about 10 years now. The Oblong series is still within SoSo, true, but in an eastern side that now has a matching, somewhat larger, west part (Casey art).
In thinking about it now, Mike’s exhibit, like the Blue Feather Gallery mentioned before, may be “permanent”, or as permanent as I can promise in the ever shifting world of My Second Life. Connected with this is a very interesting and perhaps still developing set of coincidences surrounding the name origin of SoSo, a *conscious* or purposeful fusion of Peter Gabriel’s top selling So album and the comic corruption of the moniker Peter the Great to Peter the Good and then Peter the So So, or Peter SoSo. But what I didn’t realize until more recently is the *barely* unconscious connection with Led Zeppelin’s similarly archetypal album ZoSo, also generically called Led Zeppelin IV. Here’s the story behind the odd name in case you didn’t know or remember. In reading up myself on the origin, I was interested to see that ZoSo is also a nickname for Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. But all this becomes odder when I find out Mike’s most recent, larger synching project (more on the whole “synching” thing soon enough, I suppose) involves just this very album, and, in particular, the song “Stairway To Heaven” that ends the traditional side 1 of ZoSo/Led Zep IV. The resulting backwards synchronicity, combining this song with a section of The Wizard of Oz movie, is cleverly dubbed “Stairway From Heaven,” and you can see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HywC71qZOs
In our correspondence, Dr. Casey has talked about, in some detail, the symbolism he finds embedded in the 8 minute synchronicity, which has been of some influence. Just off the top, what I like about it is that the cuing point between the 2 involved media (there’s only 1 cue, differentiating “Stairway From Oz” from a more manipulated audiovisual mashup) is what I’d call “natural” or “unforced”. It is simply “Stairway To Heaven” played backwards (otherwise unmanipulated) to a similarly backwards playing Wizard of Oz, starting right when Dorothy opens the front door of her just crashed farmhouse and enters Oz (Munchkinland) for the first time. Since the movie is playing backwards here, the synch starts with Dorothy *closing* this door, then, instead of opening it, and the backwards “Stairway To Heaven” matching this with what appears to be the phrase, “Love vanquished.”
Quite a powerful view with the subtitles and all, but Mike’s theories concerning SFO are what really struck me. I’d like to see him post these to the web somewhere. Perhaps on this blog?
But I found this little tangle of meaningful coincidences — synchronicities themselves, really, in a classical, Jungian manner — very interesting. In writing all this out, I think it means, on one, basic level, that Mike art should have a permanent place in the SoSo gallery, as mentioned before. I would not take it the logical, last step and rename his part of SoSo ZoSo (too obvious), but the link has nonetheless been locked in.
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I must, then, move on the next gallery specifically created for the Pietmond Art Crawl: Norum. Julie Sadler is a newer friend who featured my involvement in Second Life art in a post on her large, influential Collage Clearinghouse back in 2009. Probably the great majority of *her* friends and followers, at the time, thought — what’s Julie on about here? Virtual art? Textures on prims?
More recently, I asked Julie’s permission to go through her flickr site and select various photo textures for creating art to hang in the brand spanking new Norum Gallery of Pietmond. I thought virtual representations of her collage/mixed media pieces would play well within that small, intimate space, and the final results appear to prove my instincts right. Ms. Sadler seems to agree; she’s even published her own post concerning the Norum Gallery and Pietmond in general to her wonderful blog.
More will develop of this. Besides managing her blog, Julie is super busy creating art in Real Life. Oh, and I believe she also has a regular, day job, like most of us struggling, creative types. The Collage Clearinghouse, while also acting as a podium for others to discuss their own collage efforts if they wish, remains primarily a place Julie shares with the world personal stories of trials and tribulations/successes and achievements with the same. Exposure for any type of artist is a high challenge, but the overall work of collage artists weave in added twists to this old problem. Copyright reverberations spring to mind immediately.
I have promised Julie that I’ll read her blog back to front in the coming months, with further questions from me forthcoming I’m sure. Pietmond is not finished with Julie, I don’t think.
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Which brings us to the Something To CHRO About gallery just across the sidewalk from the Norum Gallery. STCA features a good number of photos by Edna Million, now a known “High Country” artist with several Real Life gallery showings garnishing her creative resume. Edna is also a writer who hopes to published — nay, *will* publish several, perhaps many novels and larger works in the coming years. Photography is a complementary, art focus. And like baker and Julie before her, Edna is also a collage artist, although she hasn’t worked in that medium for a number of years. *And,* Edna also happens to be my (baker b.’s) Real Life wife.
I am projecting a *really* big, future venture fusing our collage sensibilities (and Edna’s photography skills), but it will involve an extended “trip” to Britain, probably months and months in length and which may not happen until we are both retired. In the meantime, Edna has already visited England for 2 weeks with a friend this fall, and my virtual avatar Baker Bloch, aided by a touch of collage magic, hehe, was able to do the same this past spring, as recorded in Pietmond’s final, present gallery: the Tower of TILE.
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And that concludes my little spiel about Pietmond art developments, still a work in progress!
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