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.

Thought it might be time to focus once again on Juliette, the lovely and loyal subject of much of my attention in Second Life. She is the face and figure of all of my digital artwork, the focal point of my search for the human heart and mind within the avatar. Fortunately for me, though, she is kind, generous, and very, very patient. She has to deal with an obsessive perfectionist, after all, and pulls it off with grace and poise. Can’t figure out how she does it, actually.
Suddenly, however, a new side of her personality has begun to emerge. To give her a break from the lights and cameras I began a series of photo shoots using myself as a blissed-out rock star for the subject of my next painting, and Juliette took one look at those shots and decided she was not gonna be left out of this party. She has long wanted to be on stage, she claimed, and not just as a pretty face. She wants to be a rock star herself, dammit, and then went on to inform me of her considerable musical talent and experience. I was floored. We then, of course, had to go shopping. Women.
The photo above was taken at Bowling Green State University, where she began to unpack and test her new guitar – a classic Stratocaster from KLP Productions, one of the best musical equipment builders in SL. She has been rocking the house ever since; the studio will never be the same. We also picked up a gorgeous set of drums, btw, since she is multi-talented, and, well, drumming runs deep in this family. We’ll talk more about that later, though; looks like this story line has just begun.

During the long flight from Los Angeles to Amsterdam, where we caught a connecting flight to Berlin, my physical counterpart and I spent some time contemplating the significance of our long journey. One of the more interesting tidbits we stumbled upon was the fact that his father had entered Berlin as an American infantryman many years before and was at the center of the final decisive battle that crushed Hitler’s army, liberating Berlin and the rest of Europe from the Nazi nightmare. Now, at the dawn of a new century, his son was entering this vibrant cultural capital to participate in an international celebration made possible by that victory: the opening of an art exhibit at the Austrian Embassy. If only Daddy could see him now.

From the first evening we were there, it felt as though we had arrived at a large, cosmopolitan dinner party. The city itself, like all great cities, has an air of excitement about it, but Berlin seems to have a special kind of energy; it is filled with a sense of its own renewal. After all, how many metropolises have been bombed into oblivion, only to arise from the ashes a few decades later as a thriving center of art and commerce? This was indeed a special place with much history and you could smell it in the air; even under those cold, grey, snow-laden skies. Within hours we were enjoying wienerschnitzel and pilsner at Cafe Einstein with fellow Second Lifers KK Jewell and Jaynine Scarborough; and this was just the beginning. The following day we paid our respects at the Bauhaus Archive, just a few blocks from our room at the Hotel Berlin. The likes of Klee, Kandinsky and Mies Van Der Rohe had all walked and talked in these hallowed halls. What a country.

Later that evening we attended a dinner reception at the Twelve Apostles restaurant in East Berlin for the participating artists, generously provided by our host, noted architect Bernd Boetzel, aka Vision Planer. It was a real international cultural exchange, with El Bocho, a grafitti artist from Berlin; Mario Dalpra of Vienna; Iskren Iliev, a painter hailing from Bulgaria but now living in Vienna; Nina Maron, a painter from Vienna, Rob Steenhorst, a digital artist from the Netherlands, and yours truly, Chrome Underwood, frontin’ and maxin’ for the USA and Second Life. The words and the wine flowed in endless streams until the late hours of the night. We then climbed into the back of Rob’s van (haven’t done that in a few years) and headed out to visit Billy Wilder’s bar, where we finished off the evening’s adventure.

The following night found us at the Austrian Embassy, mingling with a pretty good-sized and highly-energized crowd in the upper level gallery. This had been preceded by a series of short performances by two well-known Austrian actors which, as far as I could tell, went over pretty well. I didn’t have a clue what they were saying, but it was a chance to sit back and listen to the German language in the raw; I found myself marveling at its expressiveness and, well, to be honest, its musicality. Without understanding a word, I was moved by it, as I might have been by a jazz performance. Perhaps I had seen too many sneering Nazi officers on the silver screen over the years; this went a long way toward correcting that imbalance.

Since there were  many, many wonderful experiences, too numerous to recount here, I will leave you with the impressions of an American artist in Berlin…..

Grey skies and light snow as we walk the streets of recent history; bullet holes in monuments, church towers stand alone and broken, filling the air with sadness, pride, hope and a bright new energy braced with knowledge of an awful truth. Standing near the door of a Spanish bistro in the cold East Berlin night, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes with my new German friends. Everyone looks good in black, it says on my bag of Dutch licorice. The Berlin Wall, the longest running art show in the world, where graffiti trumps the Cold War. Cheap trinkets at Checkpoint Charlie, memories of the death and resurrection of freedom bolted to facades all around us, twisted rebar and triumphant images of German artists. A luminous Brandenberg Gate suddenly appears in the night as we weave our way to the Austrian Embassy. Throngs of passionate visitors surrounding each tiny jewel of a painting at the Paul Klee exhibit; the unbearable heroic sadness of Kathe Kollwitz; the pristine purity of the Bauhaus Archive rusting in the snow, a woman whose makeup is ruined by tears. A golden angel staring pointlessly at the memory of France. The exhilaration of liberty in the soaring, dancing, singing buildings of the New Berlin, where hope is made of glass and steel, and embedded in the hearts of its people. Ich bin ein Berliner.

Images, from the top: anonymous graffiti on what’s left of the Berlin Wall; LoveDot, giclee print on aluminum by Rob Steenhorst; and another anonymous work on The Wall.

Chrome standing in front of his latest work, The Possibility of Physical Immortality in the Mind of Someone Famous. The 10-foot high glass tank installation contains British artist Damien Hirst suspended in 2200 gallons of formaldehyde.

Last evening, just before dusk, I walked onto the plains at Help Island and came upon two young gladiators practicing their deadly moves. One, a spiky flaming warrior princess, fire-hardened metal to the core and brandishing a flaming sword, stood against her opponent, a large, lightning-quick robospider, his golden whiplash tentacles splaying in all directions.

I was fortunate to be there and be able to get inside the action, armed only with my trusty Kodak Brownie. The deadly dance, as you will see, was pure art. You can join the action at my flickr set, At play in the Cosmic Sandbox.

Click image to see full size.

Chrome Underwood, our virtual representative in Second Life, has just signed a deal with Ruttan Gallery, the premier exhibition space in the Cetus Gallery District. His first exhibit of recent digital paintings will be in December. Read the full story at our parallel site, Chrome Never Sleeps.

Photo, above: Chrome discussing his work with Xander Ruttan, founder of Ruttan Gallery. Click to see full size.

Needless to say, I was delighted when my good friend Harper Beresford contacted me to let me know that Xander Ruttan was interested in meeting with us to discuss my digital art and a possible exhibition at Ruttan Gallery, the premier space in the Cetus Gallery District. Digital art? How interesting. I had almost forgotten I was an artist.

Up until a couple of years ago, I had been cranking out large works of art at a pretty good clip, kind of a one-man digital Warhol factory (Andy would have loved it); printing many of them on canvas or archival rag paper, a select few chosen to exhibit in my local neighborhood, Southern California. Then it all ground to a halt.. no, actually, I should say that it was more like I jumped from one moving train to another, before the first one had a chance to grind to a halt. I became a writer.

Xander, a well-known artist, critic and gallery owner himself in RL (California, no less), was also the driving force behind the creation of the Cetus sim, now the locus of a number of galleries, home to a growing arts community and host to many other arts and media events. He proved to be a more than gracious host by welcoming us into his brand-new, mid-century modernist home, and then led us into town to check out the gallery space, where we discussed more of the details of the show and experimented with size and setup arrangements. What fun.

The first show will be sometime in December, drawing from my current body of work; to be followed later in 2009 with a show of entirely new….. well, exactly what that work will be after having spent the last few years writing and wandering virtual worlds may prove to be as great a surprise to me as it will to the patrons of Ruttan Gallery. I honestly can’t wait to see it myself.

Cetus Gallery District – Chosen , Cetus (216, 5, 37), Second Life

Photo: Chrome, standing in front of his digital painting, Origami.