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.

Well, we been workin’ mighty hard over the past several weeks, crankin’ out one masterpiece after another… almost all of them involving Juliette and her considerable modeling, acting and dancing skills. She worked so hard during the holiday season, all in preparation for the upcoming show in Berlin, that I decided to reward her with a new chopper from MLCC motorcycles. She is one hot mama now, and has a surefire way to get away from the paparazzi quick as a flash. You go, girl. You really, really go.

Visit MLCC in New York City:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/MLCC%2C%20NYC/103/231/21/

Speaking of On the Road, it wasn’t all that long ago that Chrome, the immortal bohemian artist and writer, blew in on a fresh breeze from the New Wilderness, fully formed, jazzed by everything and everyone around him. He touched down briefly in San-Fran-cisco to cast his spell on the Love Generation along with fellow poets Michael McClure and Bob Dylan, seen above, standing outside the Six Gallery in 1965.

He saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, while In the rooms around him his friends would come and go, talking of Michelangelo; you know, measuring their lives in coffee spoons, blah, blah, blah. It was so hip to be cool, he once said, that he could barely contain himself. Hence, that legendary road. Ahh, but he was so much older then; he’s younger than that now.

Twin brothers Chrome and Manhattan are seen above meeting for the first time in over a year, earlier today. Read the heartwarming story of their reunion, The Light Brothers On the Road, at our twin site, Chrome Never Sleeps.

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.

Being one of the lesser gods – that is, one with a full array of superpowers who chooses to use them in the service of exploration, observation and discovery – I spend a good deal of time wandering in the dark. You see, there are surprises waiting, in the midnight hour, for those who have eyes to see… . There is the magic of moonlight, of course; stars dancing among the clouds, the earthy radiance of an occasional wood nymph or satyr – but what often goes unnoticed are the little things… once the sun has faded and that rich darkness descends, otherwise ordinary objects begin to display their magical qualities; qualities hidden by the harsh light of day.

I was diverted to an unknown sim on my way to meet a friend recently, and, since I love surprises and consider no event coincidental, I decided to stick around and have a look-see. It was a small island with little evidence of any living, breathing avatar activity; it appeared to be a docking facility of some sort for a fleet of airships and sailing vessels. Several dirigibles, for instance, could be seen scattered across the sky, gloriously decked out in the best Steampunk style I had seen in some time.

After close inspection of one of these weightless beauties, I descended to the deck of an immense three-masted schooner sitting dockside below, and upon landing, noticed a full-sized swimming pool on deck. Under a pitch black sky, I slipped beneath the surface of the glowing pool, swam underwater to one of several colorful floating tubes, and drifted up and into the center of a perfect circle. A moment of solitude, a perfect meditation, a brief encounter with the center of the universe.

My virtual friend didn’t mind a bit. She, too, was delayed; she had been deep in conversation with several dolphins she had met while wandering the bottom of the ocean.

Click image to see full size