Been working on Collagesity building for about a solid month now. Well, take away that week I had to go down to mom’s and help her out (no internet access there). It’s all bleed’n coming together.
Thoughts: I’m beginning to think that the Embarras series is already over at 9 or 10 collages, much like the Sam Parr series from last September. If so, the Falmouth series still stands alone as a unique and pretty gargantuan work at 61 collages. But we’ll have to see about Embarras — I still have another floor of the Red Umbrella vacant and ready to be filled with new pieces. I might try to push the total number to at least 20. But, really, I’ve been collaging crud together in Collagesity itself, or, as my virtual friend Veyot put it, the town is yet another collage of stuff I’ve picked up here and there. For example, almost all of the materials for the sets in the brand new Temple of Choice were recently found on SL Marketplace as freebies. I just artistically and logically mashed them all together, and quite quickly.
There are some more similarities between the collages of the series and the collages that are the virtual towns that hold representations of these series. A prime example would be the use of the same buildings in the various towns, whose function can develop and even change in time. This would parallel the employment of the same images in separate collages. The Red Umbrella, currently the holder of the new Embarras series of collages, formerly was called SoSo West and contained the abstract expressionist style art work of fellow audiovisual syncher Mike Casey. In bending the art of my virtual villages toward pure collage, I decided that a more narrow definition of curation should be effected, and thus the changeover. Plus, as I’ve stated before, I have a lot more collages to display now personally than when I joined Second Life in early 2008. Something had to be pushed out to make room, or else I stop displaying some of my earlier digital efforts, which means eliminating part or all of the “Art 10×10” (2004-2009), which I can’t seem to be able to do. That effort still represents what I see as a base for everything to evolve from. True, the Falmouth series seems to go beyond it in a rather large way, but the 2 newest series (Sam Parr and Embarras) fit right into the mold of a Rose Hill or Hidalgo series from the 10×10. It seems I have found an artistic voice. It will continue to develop from this base.
But in saying all this, I’d still like to display the collage work of others. Most definitely! Already in the village is the Norum Gallery, a long standing gallery containing the stylings of Julie Sadler. And although not currently displayed in Collagesity, Kollage Kid’s work, most recently found in Noru this past summer and fall, will always have a special place for me. Kenneth Rouggeau is another collagist whose works I seem to run into again and again. But I need to extend my umbrella and search further.
Currently I’m planning to keep my land in Minoa through at least March. I seem to be getting weary of leaping around Second Life, having to reconstruct town after town again and again. I want a town — just land with a couple of structures and some landscaping is not enough. 8704 square meters is the *bare minimum* for these kind of virtual villages, I’ve found out. But anything beyond this bumps me up to the next tier level. Thanks to the oh-so-handy conversion of prims into convex hulls to lower land impact, I believe that 8704 will also be enough for my needs. Oh sure, I’d like more land, but we all have limits we have to work within, which is good in many ways — makes me tighten up what I already have and refine it better than if it was just spread out all over the place.
Keeping this in mind, and adding in the fact that I’ve been researching old blog posts for a potential Rubi Musuem, I see that VWX Town in Rubi this past winter (extended from the earlier, original VWX Town in Philudoria) was also a unique creation, since I had so much land to work with and right next to the Great Rubi Woods in a most strategic place. The Heterocera Diagonal ran right through the core of the property. A new avatar was created (Edwardston Resident) and old ones arose from their virtual tombs and renewed relationships. The woods were found to be *alive*. Then I had to come back to them in a more functional and long term way to complete the Second Life circle of creativity begun in 2008. Rubi was my first mainland experience and it may be my last. Full circle.
Sunklands 