“Go forth and multiply!”, she say. “Can I borrow your calculator?”, I say.

Just over a month ago I began the daunting task of creating a small tribe of avatars for an education project in Second Life. Having spent three years focusing on the subtleties of ‘synthetic individualism’ – tweaking shapes and skins and other things into distinct and credible virtual beings, I thought to myself – hell yeah, this can’t be that difficult, right? Well, I was cruising along at a pretty good clip until I hit the magic number ten and began to realize that creating fake people by the dozen was not for the faint of heart.

To make things more difficult, they all had to be ‘professionals’; that is, their appearance had to comply with the standards of the business world. Needless to say, having spent most of my real life (not to mention my virtual one) avoiding those standards by invoking my artistic license, I suddenly found myself staring into a yawning chasm, an occasional white shirt and tie drifting by. I not only had to quickly get a handle on an unfamiliar style of dress, but I had to find places to buy the damn stuff. I soon learned that there are a lot more mini skirts than pencil skirts in this little paradise of ours.

Now that it’s all over, though, I must admit it was satisfying in an odd sort of way. Not to sound megalomaniacal or anything, but it did make me feel a bit godlike, even though it was probably a bit more like being one of the elves in God’s workshop. But don’t tell that to the 21 new creatures who now believe in me. I wouldn’t want to disappoint them.

That little fox up there, btw, is Quin, my femme finale. She had just acquired that glorious crown of cascading locks and I had just enough strength left to snap a photo. A fitting image to end one of the bigger population explosions in the history of sl; 21 avatars birthed in 36 days. Would that qualify them as noobie boomers?

Anyway, I think I’ll  try to grab me a bit of sabbath. Procreating can be a lot of work, ya know.

Someone asked me recently what it was that I was after in my exploration of Second Life as an artistic medium, or, more accurately, as a base of operations and a springboard to first life for my creative activities. Interesting question, though, because it goes straight to the heart of the matter; no ifs, ands or buts. Simple and direct. My answer? “I’m looking for the legos behind it all.” Sounds flippant, I know, but it was a light-hearted way to express a serious endeavor.. to be able to delve into the deeper aspects of the virtual soul while playing like a child in my very own wonderland. Pixels, legos, atoms – they’re all children’s blocks in a big old cosmic game; God, man, avatar – the chain gets bigger, but the game remains the same.

That lego comment reminded of another serious artist who once took a detour off his career path to play with legos, also for a very serious reason. Norman Mailer, the great 20th century novelist, once built his utopian vision of “The City of the Future” in his living room, using thousands of legos to bring forth his dream. This fascinating story was recounted in Mary Dearborn’s Mailer: A Biography:

In many ways this was a typically Mailerian project. He announced it in advance in the pages of the New York Times Magazine and, to underline his seriousness, in Architectural Forum. The prose city he outlined would change the face not only of public architecture but of society itself. He had long blamed architecture for many of the woes of contemporary society, and now he applied himself to setting forth his plans in pronouncements and, beginning in the fall of 1965, the creation of an actual model city, immense in scale and meticulously planned.He decided to build a model of a city that could be populated by 4 million people, and to build it in his own living room. He conceived it as a monument to his sweeping utopian vision.

At the quotidian level, Norman acted as the brains behind the project, soon discovering that he didn’t like the sound of the plastic Lego pieces snapping together; it struck him as vaguely obscene. He delegated the task to [fourth wife] Beverly’s stepbrother, Charlie Brown, who worked as a kind of handyman for him, and to Eldred Mowery, a friend from Provincetown now in the city. The two men drove Norman’s 1961 blue convertible Falcon out to the Lego plant in New Jersey and returned with cases of the colored blocks. Then Norman directed them, instructing them to create hanging bridges, buildings with trapdoors, and four-foot-high towers, all constructed on an aluminum-covered piece of plywood on a four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood supported by five-foot legs.

Construction proceeded apace, and Norman never really did call a halt to it. But someone from the Museum of Modern Art came out to Brooklyn to take photographs of the model, hoping to display it at the museum. At that point, Mailer and his helpers found that the “city” could not be taken out of the apartment. though they consulted movers with cranes and took measurements of the glass in the front windows, they soon saw that it couldn’t be removed without being disassembled first. Here Norman drew the line. He told Mowery to build a fence around it and leave it where it was. There it still sits, occupying a third of the living room’s floor space. Beverly, who contributed a scale model of the United Nations to indicate the overall scale of the city, professes that she loved it, but concedes, ‘It was a bitch to dust.’

Though, like most utopian visions it never came to fruition, the image of one of the giants of American literature stretched out on the floor snapping legos together for hours and hours on end is one that stuck with me; and, in my own experience,  the best work I’ve done has always seemed to pour out of me like a kid with finger paints. So, I suppose a good definition of the word ‘master’ could well be: someone who makes extraordinary accomplishments look like child’s play.

Let the games begin.

Read the complete article at Greg.org.

I thought I had decided to stop exhibiting for a while. All of my paintings had been shown more than once, and I hadn’t been in the studio for several months, having been all wrapped up in launching my comic strip, and then lost in the details of building a new website. It was time to get back to work.

So, when Merlina Rokocoko IM’d me the other day and asked if I would participate in the premier exhibit of Pirats‘ new gallery, Linkers, I hesitated for a moment. After all, I had made a decision and thought I should stick to it. Of course, I hadn’t taken into account the persuasive powers of Merlina, a virtual force of nature.

After I had hung my work, though, I received a nice surprise: the new poster for the show (below) included my painting, Sleeping Beauty, as the background. Quite an honor to play backup for a great looking group of artists: Fuschia Nightfire, Maryva Mayo, Dulcis Taurog and Tani Thor. The show starts today, but unfortunately I’ll be in Los Angeles. That’s Real Life.

[6:40:08 AM] she says:   thinking about you
[6:40:15 AM] she says: I dreamt about you last night
[6:40:22 AM] she says: omg wtf
[6:40:44 AM] she says: omg wrong window
[6:40:47 AM] she says: heheheee
[6:42:14 AM] she says: sorry….

There are a lot of stories yet to be told about the creative history of the metaverse, about all those sparkling ripples that formed the tsunami of artistic endeavor over the past several years, in every corner of Second Life. Great works appear, great works disappear beneath the waves, leaving nothing behind but some dazzling memories and a few photographs.

One of those stories will be the history of a sim called Cetus – once an eminent arts district launched by Xander Ruttan of Ruttan Gallery fame (where I had my first SL exhibit, btw), later to become a vast wonderland for the experimental architecture of DB Bailey and friends. DB is well known in both worlds for his visionary designs and builds, as well as for his pioneering use of immersive virtual worlds for architectural design and testing.

But, though all things must pass, not all things pass in such colorful and flamboyant ways as this one will. In a finale perfectly in keeping with the explosion of creativity that the sim is known for, DB has decided to host what he refers to as the “Bonfire of the Inventories”, a metaphorical conflagration which  will be second only to the “real” one at Burning Life. As DB puts it,

“Sometimes in order to move on to new realms, one has to clean out the attic. Sometimes a good old bonfire is the best solution. So DB Bailey’s inventory high above CETUS is in flames. Soon to be gone forever. Amongst these artifacts are forgotten works by such artists as Patch Thibaud, Chrome Underwood, Keystone Brouchard, Eshi Otawara, Nomad Molly Nostrum.

You are invited to come visit the conflagration and final days of CETUS. The fire will rage through mid-March, at which time the history of CETUS will come to an end. And DB Bailey will start afresh with a whole new box of toys.”

Stop by and catch a glimpse of some of that collective creative genius while it is still visible above the waves. An example of that genius is the altar of Patch Thibaud‘s Church of St. Briers, a soaring cathedral where angels hover above the luminous (and voluminous) figure known as Grand Odalisque, by RightAsRain Rimbaud.

Seen standing reverently before the sleeping beauty in the photo above are, from left to right, The Chromester, Patch Thibaud and DB Bailey.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cetus/47/228/35

Well, it sure has been a wild year, in a virtual sense… the campaign to launch my virtual art into the concrete jungles of the real world has begun, with the production of the first limited edition print by the giclee masters at Nash Editions in Los Angeles, as mentioned in a previous post.

Another piece of news is the completion of my new inworld gallery, containing many of my recent works, including several comic book pages. The collection will grow and change, of course, as more new work is completed, keeping the collection continually renewed, fresh and interesting. That’s a night time view of the nearly-completed gallery above.

Also have been working on a new online gallery with links to many of the activities and projects I’m currently involved in, including the band Cherrybomb and several upcoming machinima films. The coming year looks like it will be a real adventure, and for all of us virtual artists who are heading into the real world, I have a sense that the timing couldn’t be better. The world is waiting for us. Hope to see you all there.

Feliz Año Nuevo, mis amigos.

Playing around with this linear sequential thing, expanding into a slide show-cum-movie ala Picasa, now up on YouTube. This one is a rough experiment using stills taken of Juliette for a recent comic strip on mojozone. A shout-out to Bob Marley (can ya hear me, Bob?) for that great sound; not sure who did the mix.

Always a sad moment to be at the other end of a show, just before it is taken down; feels like the carnival’s leaving town. This is a shot of the exhibit at Pirats Omega Gallery last night, just before it was all packed up and shipped out. On to another show, somewhere down the road. Oh… yeah. Studio 33.

Checking in to report on recent activities around here that don’t happen to have anything to do whatsoever with comic books, webcomics, graphic novels or any other linear/narrative verbal/visual forms of communication. No discussions about mermaids, flying red porsches, ground-to-air missiles, cannibalism – or any other such subject, for that matter – will be found here today. If you want to know what it feels like to wear a translucent red motorcycle between your legs, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Like, say, over at mojozone.

But what I will talk about are all the other non-linear, somewhat-verbal-but-extremely visual activities I’ve been playing around with. By the way, I put that picture of myself riffing with our band cherrybomb up there, one, because I thought I look pretty cool, and two, because a friend said not long ago that I looked like Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters of Mercy. I came across this shot last night and suddenly got her point. Here’s Andrew:

See what I mean? May have to go out and buy a pack of virtual cigarettes, but other than that I’d have to agree that there’s a strong resemblance there. But I digress, and once again attempt to focus on that non-linear thing in spite of my burned out state of mind. Where was I? Oh yeah….

Over the past weeks and months, I’ve created a half dozen new avatar paintings, had several major exhibits in Second Life, have begun writing the graphic novel Chromium and Juliette, started working on a machinima film about my art, started that webcomic, and in conjunction with my new web gallery have begun moving my paintings out of SL and into RL in the form of giclee prints. Of course, the SL photography goes on and folders overflow (gotta get back to koinup and flickr.. been too busy for that too).

Finally, the band… cherrybomb is quietly ticking in the background (I know cherrybombs don’t tick, but it works for me). Initial studio recording has begun in the real world, and will continue as time allows, but it seems Botgirl is even busier than me these days, so it appears things will be moving pretty slowly until sometime after the holidays. Then, hey, the sky’s the limit.

A tribute to Birthday, a painting by Marc Chagall, by Art Box, at the PiRats Art Network’s Omega Gallery. Art Box is a group of Second Life artists who create “detailed three dimensional sets, each recreating scenes in homage to famous works of art, in a virtual world setting.” Posing for the ‘painting’ above are Camille and her friend, Manhattan Atlas. To really appreciate this, google the original painting.