What are your “go-to” Second Life art blogs?

I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things Second Life-wise.  Part of that is cleaning up the blogroll to reflect the current world of Second Life-related art and artisans.

I’ve pared back the dead/inactive blogs and sites…now it’s time to populate it with the newer entries. For that, I need your help.

What blogs do you look to in order to keep abreast of the Second Life art scene?  Whose artisan blogs do you enjoy reading?  Let me know in the comments (with links, please!), and I’ll add them to the lists on the left-hand-column!

In solidarity with the people of Iran

Refreshing the Blogroll…help!

A quick stroll through the blog to read Nazz’s great new piece  revealed a neglected Blogroll of GREAT Second Life-related arts (both visual and music) blogs.  So it’s time to update it.

Any suggestions for additions/subtractions from the readers?  Post your ideas in the comments!

Photobook: “Changing Hues” opening party

What a great couple of hours!  Thanks to Phinn for making this afternoon in Second Life so enjoyable.  And you to EVERYONE for coming!  (If you showed up, I probably snapped a photo of you…)

“Changing Hues” opens Saturday!

GRAND OPENING RECEPTION

featuring Phinn Boffin

Saturday, February 7 – Noon PST

Second Arts photography gallery is pleased to welcome Phinn Boffin in a rare exhibition of her inworld photography, “Changing Hues.” Please join us at a reception for Phinn as we celebrate the opening of her show. Over three and a half years’ worth of experience in virtual photography has culminated in this collection of over 30 pieces, most of which show off the unretouched vision of the pixie photographer. It’s a magical vision, from one of SL’s great creative minds.  Please join us!

The next Second Arts show is set!

 

Maria Maria by Phinn Boffin, from her Flickr photostream

With a scheduled opening for February 7 at noon SL time, we’re going to have a show by SL photographer Phinn Boffin!

 

Check out her Flickr photostream here.

Can’t wait to see what she has in store for the gallery…

Carlotta Ceawlin’s Second Arts show – A tour de force

Perhaps the greatest unanticipated benefit of the Second Arts “Bay City Visions” photo contest was the incredible talent that just came out of nowhere and amazed judges and visitors alike.  Chief among them is someone I did not know (and still barely know), German avatar Carlotta Ceawlin.  Her contest-winning photo is on the cover of the “Bay City Visions” book, of which she received a courtesy copy from yours truly.  She also had a one-month show at Second Arts, one that is closing tomorrow.

In retrospect, I did Carlotta a disservice by going on a (badly needed) vacation in the middle of January.  I hope everyone had a chance to see Carlotta works.  If you didn’t, I took photos of the displays and present them as a 31-slide display for posterity, and to inspire inworld photographers to push the boundaries…because, as Carlotta shows time after time, you can make incredible artwork with images from the grid.

Enjoy…and thank you, Carlotta!

Back in a couple of weeks!

It’s RL vacation time for Morris’ RL avatar…and he’s taking his laptop but won’t make any promises about his Twitter, Plurk, blog or inworld activity.  This has been one crazy year, and he needs to decompress.  Trust me, he REALLY needs to decompress.

You should stop by Second Arts while I’m out, though, as Carlotta Ceawlin has her month-long photo show up.  As great as her Bay City Visions-winning piece was, the rest of her portfolio is even better.  Definitely worth a visit.

And I’ll see you on the flip side…don’t let the grid burn down while I’m gone!

Sharing holiday joy in Second Life

An unexpected thing happened this holiday season…I was DELUGED with Christmas gifts and cards! It’s an overwhelming feeling have a handful of gifts waiting for you EVERY TIME you log in. Having been as detached from the SL scene as I’ve been (or at least felt I’ve been), these demonstrations of friendship hit me right where it counts. Thanks, everyone!

Beyond that, you really have to admire the innovative spirit in SL’s creative class. I decided to put out all of the Christmas gifts on the Second Arts plaza as a quickie display of this great work, and here’s a 39-picture slideshow of the world in and around Vig’s Christmas tree…

I didn’t mention that the particle snowflakes throughout the slideshow were from a rezzer by Alizarin Goldflake. Also, I received a number of no mod/no transfer textures that I could not put on prims to display…so there really was quite a bit more beyond what I set out at Second Arts.

Again, it’s humbling to know that one has so many friends across the grid. Thanks, everyone, for making my Christmas just that much brighter.

The “Bay City Visions” RL book arrived!

And, if I may, this book is downright stunning.  The Oyster Bay book is a great historical tome, with over 700 SL photos across the 200 pages, but the Bay City Visions book is about the art…not photojournalism.

Blurb does an amazing job transferring the very high resolution SL images onto the printed page.  The book itself is an 10×8-inch landscape format, so the photos themselves are around 6 inches tall (accounting for margins, captions, etc.).  The glossy covers complement the matte pages quite well, too.  I hadn’t purchased a softcover book from Blurb before (my Oyster Bay copy is hardcover with slipjacket), and the quality of the covers and the binding lead me to think that it’s very acceptable as a coffee table-quality edition.  

Here are a few RL photos of my copy…

46 pages of top-quality Second Life photography by 24 creative minds, all themed around the SL experiment that is Bay City.  The softcover edition is $24.95+shipping, hardcover with slipcover is $35.95+shipping and hardcover with imagewrap (imagine a hardcover book with the cover images printed onto the hardcover itself) is $37.95+shipping.  

Oh yeah, I’m not taking a dime in profit from this publication.  Don’t think that I’m hyping to line my pocket.  I’m darned proud to have done this project and want to share the incredible feeling of holding SL images in real life with you.  

And, yes, there will be more such projects to come in the future!